#like hobbies and stuff

[noirandchocolate]

Several weeks ago one of my coworkers called me over into her cubicle and gave me a very unexpected gift. Her mother passed away recently, and she'd been packing stuff up at her condo to give to relatives and sell, so the home could be sold. The mother was an avid knitter and crocheter, and when my coworker came upon her stash of equipment, she told me, she "immediately thought of me as someone who might get some use out of it."

So, I have inherited a varied collection of knitting needles and crochet hooks, cable needles, sewing needles, and, best of all, now-out-of-print pattern books, mostly for blankets, because that was what this lady loved to make most. Plus, I also have a bunch of gauge swatches she made, pinned to little bits of card covered in perfect schoolteacher handwriting setting out the patterns they were made to test.

And also...

My coworker brought another bag, full of yarn and...knitted blanket squares. Her mother's last started project, before she got too sick to continue. And she asked if there was anything I could do with it.

It turned out, there are twelve completed squares, and I quickly located the pattern book they are from amid those given to me. It's a book of 60 patterns, meant to be put together however the maker wishes into blankets of 20 squares. I figured out which of the numbered patterns were already made, and selected eight more that I thought might go well with them.

So now! I am working on completing! My coworker's mother's last knitting project!

And I really am feeling very good about doing it.

[strongermonster]

had sex with a seamstress last night, after which when we were lying there talking, she took some strands of hair from each of us off the sheets and braided them together into a thread, and then before she left she told us she takes bits of hair from all her lovers and stitches them into a patch in the lining of her coat 'for luck in future love'. it's sort of romantic in a haunted doll kind of way. which btw, she also makes dolls with the hair that accumulates in her hair brush, and felts little creatures out of her cats' fur, habits she got from her grandmother who was into hairwork, a hobby i did not know existed still in our modern years. anyways. hi everybuddy. if you never hear from me again i've been turned into a trinket for her collection

[so-i-did-this-thing]

I just wanted to say I really admire how effortlessly masculine you are but how you also love so many traditionally "feminine" things. I am working on coming out as a trans man and dread people telling me I'm not allowed to knit and stuff anymore

One of the annoying aspects of transition is you become this walking litmus test for weird gender essentialism - even in progressive folks - and you're gonna learn just how much people deprive themselves of personal joy because of it.

I cannot tell you how many well-meaning people ended up shitting on my hobbies out of a desire to give me "man lessons" that I never asked for in the first place.

All I can say is, stick to your guns. Sure, knitting has also historically been a masculine activity, but to acknowledge such feels like giving credence to the argument that you have to drop "unmanly" interests. Knit because you like to knit, not because you are "allowed to" based on some gendered technicality.

Don't feel like you need to sacrifice parts of yourself in order to transition. If the best version of you is a man who knits, or a man who likes pink, or a man who enjoys wearing makeup, resist the urge to destroy these pieces of yourself.

Detractors will attempt to weaponize everything about you in an attempt to de-legitimize who you are. The most radical thing you can do is show them how your passions only make you stronger.

The dread is real, but it gets easier to assert yourself over time. You might even find yourself becoming an ambassador to other men wrt your hobbies. Good luck!

[elodieunderglass]

And one amang, an Iyrysch man,

Uppone his hoby swyftly ran…

WAIT HANG ON - slamming the brakes on drawing this stupid picture - do you nerds even KNOW the etymology of the word “hobby”? The thing you do for pleasure? The thing you have too many of? The thing you spend too much money on and share with your friends? The thing tumblr probably is to you? Those hobbies?

It comes from a now-kind-of-extinct breed of Irish pony-horse. It was called the Irish Hobby. Supposedly the hobby got its name from the Gaelic word obann, or swift. They definitely were. They’d obann your pants clean off.

Fast tough little bastards, built for rough terrain and renowned for their speed and stamina, hobby horses belonged to the Celts, and their highly annoying style of mounted warfare. but their conquerors liked hobby horses a lot, kept them, used them for themselves, and found them useful enough, despite the fact that they also had famously useful things like mounted knights or horse archers. A lightweight Irish warrior, mounted on a hobby horse, was called a hobelar.

Reportedly and in depictions, hobelars rode without stirrups. Or saddles. Or bridles. Or - well - this is all sounding very improbable, because the hobelars COULDNT have just been charging around basically bare-assed on naked ponies, screaming, and somehow in the process undoing the composure of actual mounted armoured knights. Knights who, I remind you, had stirrups. Stirrups are useful! It’s quite likely the hobelars had some gear. And clothes. and weapons. And the ponies probably had some tack - I am picturing a bellyband that you could at least hang a saddlebag on, and a neck rope for catching the bloody thing, even if not a saddle. But the overall impression, somehow created by people on darling little ponies, was apparently quite striking and fearful.

I mean. God Forbid People Have Hobbies.

Anyway after a while, whatever people became the British had eventually conquered all of the rough terrain that hobbies were best at, and horse archers just got sexier, and mounted knights became aristos, and all the bog and forest people had been subdued, so it was time to sunset the hobelars. but WAIT! Hobby horses are still tremendously fun and appealing! They’re so fast! and you can ride them without a saddle! Sure, they’re not up to the weight of a mounted knight, or indeed a lot of guys… but surely we can still find a use for a hobby or two? In the back garden? Somewhere?

At which point an English king decided to keep hobby horses just for fun. No military application. No further development of the technology. Not for fun. Just as expensive, pleasurable, pets. Just for the joy of the thing.

And that is how hobby (activity done purely for pleasure) comes from hobby horse (small horse) possibly from obann (swift.) they’re very interesting and you should look all this up for yourself! because it sure sounds like Elodie doing a bit, doesn’t it?

Today, Irish Hobbies are functionally nonexistent. References for drawing include the Kerry Bog Pony, the Connemara, and (I personally think) Dartmoors and Exmoors. They’re said to have lent their speed to the Irish Hunter/Sport Horse and from there to the Thoroughbred, but every damn horse in the world claims relation to the Thoroughbred, and they can’t be THAT thoroughly bred.

At any rate - you can never have enough hobbies. Just be glad that yours aren’t expensive beasts with minds of their own, eating their heads off in the pasture! …Unless they are. In which case, you’re part of a proud tradition.

[imclou]

can't believe fnaf brought me out of art hibernation man what a turn of events

[royalarchivist]

How to Archive VODs and Clips

Whether you want to download VODs and/or clips for your own records or because you’d like to share them online, knowing how to archive things is handy, especially when so many streams become lost media once they’re deleted off Twitch and/or YouTube.

Here are a few programs that I use for Royal Archivist!

—

Of all the programs on this list, my personal favorites / the ones I most strongly recommend are Cobalt and Twitch Downloader! (When all else fails, OBS is also a good backup).

Cobalt

Cobalt has gained a lot of popularity the past few months, and for good reason! It's a very reliable, extremely user-friendly website that lets you save videos in MP4 formats, convert them into MP3 formats, or video-only without sound.

Cobalt is currently compatible with: BlueSky, Dailymotion, Facebook, Instagram, Loom, OK, Pinterest, Reddit, RuTube, SnapChat, SoundCloud, Streamable, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitch, Twitter, Vimeo, VK, Xiohongshu, and YouTube.

Twitch’s built-in download feature

If you’re downloading your own clip, this is the easiest method to use

First, navigate to your clips page.

To do this, click on your Twitch icon and go to “Creator Dashboard.” There will be a row of icons on your left - click the fifth button from the top (the one above the settings icon) and click on the link that says “Clips.”

At the top of the page, click on “Clips I’ve Created” and you should see a list of every clip you’ve ever made (regardless of whether or not you’ve published them, the clips are there!)

If you're having trouble, you can also type: https://dashboard.twitch.tv/u/ YOUR USERNAME HERE /clips/created

Click on the share button, and the list shown in the photo below will pop up.

After you click on the “Download” button (for landscape or portrait), a new tab will open up with the clip (which will autoplay, so heads up if you have your volume turned up high!)

Right click on the video and click “Save Video As”

That’s all there is to it! Please keep in mind that Twitch’s download function only works for clips you’ve made! You cannot use it to download VODs, or other people’s clips.

Twitch Downloader

Twitch Downloader is by far the BEST Twitch download program I have ever used. I’ve used several different ones, some which have broken because of Twitch’s updates, others which have fallen into disrepair because their creator no longer updates the program, but this one has been working consistently for me for a little over a year now. I’ve kept it very close to my chest because I’m terrified it’ll stop working one day, but it’s better to share resources than horde them out of fear.

Pros:

HD quality for all downloads! Whatever quality the stream was, that’s the quality the download will be (unless you adjust anything in the settings).

The best feature of this program is you can adjust how much you want to clip! Only want a 30 second clip from a 6 hour VOD? You can specify the section you want to download so long as you know the timestamps where you want the clip to start and where you want it to end.

You can download entire VODs.

When saving the file, it will automatically enter the original name of the stream and the stream date. (You can change this, but it’s very handy when you’re downloading an entire VOD and not a section of one).

It will automatically prompt you to update it when a new version has been released. (You do have the option to opt out of this, if you want).

There are a lot of other features available, however, I’ve never tried any of them so I can’t say how well they work. The Github page has a lot of examples and a Q&A section though, so check that out if you’re curious!

On the rare occasion that the program encounters issues, it's easy to use a past version, and the creators are quick to release new updates that resolve any problems. As of today (February 21, 2025) the latest version is currently 1.55.2, which updated last week.

Cons:

Sometimes when you click “Get Info” it won’t immediately load the VOD. This is pretty easy to solve by just restarting the program, so it’s not a huge issue imo.

You can’t preview clips before you download them, so you need to know the exact timestamps you want.

You can’t download VODs that are privated or no longer on Twitch.

How to use:

Download Twitch Downloader from Github and install the version that works for your computer. (In this case, I would download the GUI Windows-x64.zip version. Make sure you’re downloading the GUI version if you want a user-friendly version of this program).

Enter the URL of the VOD you’d like to download.

You can adjust the quality of the video and the length. If nothing is specified in the “Crop Video” section, it will download the entire VOD.

Once you’re ready, click the “Download” button and you’re good to go!

Open Video Downloader

If you’ve ever wanted to download any kind of video, I’m sure you’ve heard of Youtube-dl. There are different versions of this program, but some of them are a bit finicky and if things stop working, it can be difficult and frustrating trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it — which is why I recommend this program.

Open Video Downloader, aka youtube-dl-gui, is one of the best video downloaders I’ve ever used. It’s basically Youtube-dl with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that makes the program very easy for anyone to use.

Pros:

No coding knowledge required! VERY user-friendly.

The creator fixes user issues very quickly! Whenever the program experiences a problem, a new update is released within 24 hours.

It can download videos from pretty much all major social media platforms, including Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, Twitch clips, Instagram, and more.

Cons:

You can’t adjust the length of what you want to download. If you want to download a 2 minute section from a 5 hour Youtube VOD, you’ll have to download the entire video.

On rare occasions, I’ve had issues where it cannot download an unlisted Youtube video. There are sometimes ways to get around this, but it’s a pain and usually not worth the effort.

How to use it:

Download the latest version of the program from GitHub. Scroll all the way down to “Assets” and select the version that’s right for your computer. (For example, I use Windows, so I would download the .exe file).

Once you’ve installed it, you can start downloading things! For this example, let’s say I want to download Quackity’s “Welcome to the QSMP” video. All I need to do is copy the link and paste it into the white box at the top of the program.

Once that’s done, you should see the video pop up in your download queue. You can queue multiple videos to download at once (you can also download entire playlists too). When you’re ready, click the green download button on the bottom right (as shown in the picture below) or if you only want to download one specific video from your queue, click the download button (circled in red) next to the video.

You can adjust the quality of the video you want to download, and in theory you can choose whether to download just the audio or just the video of a video, but personally that’s never worked for me. That might just be a me issue though.

If you’d like to change where your videos are saved to, click the Folder button (circled in yellow) and choose a download destination. If nothing is chosen, it will default to your Downloads folder.

There are ways you can customize this program, but like I said earlier, this program is very very easy to use and does not require any tinkering whatsoever. You open it, download what you want, then close it. Nice and simple!

Other Recommendations

OBS is a good backup when all else fails! I have to use OBS pretty frequently for YouTube VODs, since there aren't a lot of tools that let you clip parts of a YouTube video (and I'd rather not download an entire 7 hour long VOD for a 30 second clip). There are already a lot of good tutorials out there explaining how to use OBS, so I recommend poking around and seeing what works best for you. If you're new to video downloading / archiving things, I'd still recommend starting with some of the tools I mentioned above first.

I’d recommend making a folder on your computer for clips. I find it very helpful to name all my files with this method: [Stream date] Streamer name - Something that helps me remember what this clip is about / something that will help me find it later, or a quote.

Example: [2-6-24] Mike - I hate capitalism

If you’ve got a significant amount of clips on your computer, I’d recommend backing them up and/or saving them to an external harddrive!

That’s about it! I apologize if I’ve missed any steps, but hopefully everything is more or less easy enough for folks to understand! I’m someone who does not like downloading random programs onto my computer and I’m very paranoid about cyber security, but I’ve used these programs for over a year now, and they’re very reliable and trustworthy. 10/10, I recommend both of them.

Lastly: if anyone has a recommendation for good Youtube clip downloaders, please let me know! I haven’t found any good programs that let me specify how much of a Youtube video I’d like to download, and I am suffering. Help your friendly neighborhood Archivist so I can share more clips from the early days of QSMP.

[chayatorns]

Sorry. You're not mad at me, are you? Why would I? I already knew that. What? Of course I knew. You only pretended to like it to get close to me, but you're not into it. You're more into pop rock music.

THE HEART KILLERS (2024-2025) เขาจ้างให้ผมจีบนักฆ่า dir. Jojo Tichakorn Phukhaotong

[sunlit-mess]

I wanna hear more about this guy and his lore!!

Why did he fall?

What’s his connection/relationship with Lucifer?

TELL ME EVERYTHINGGG I’M HOOKED

KOKABIEL ( Angel of the Stars / Star of God / The Burning Light )

I just thought of him being created with the sole purpose of knowledge and duty ( being affiliated with the stars and astrology ), being a high-ranked angel but not enough to be one of the archangels. Having the titles, it's as if he's similar or close to Lucifer's role (before the fall) or maybe an extension. He does everything to fulfill his purpose. However, the downside is that he always gets compared with Lucifer (pre-fall).

So what he does is look up to him, idolizing someone he has never met, he's practically devoted at some point, nearing a follower. But oh so bitter and sour because all he gets is to be COMPARED.

Cherry on top that he wants to impress Michael, but Michael can barely look at him because all he sees is Lucifer.

All of his hard work feels like it's going to waste because he'll always be a shadow of someone he never knew. And that created grudges, created hate, created his rage. Thus, it's the reason for his Fall. Bro's identity revolves around a dead person (Angel Luci). That's why he's a narcissistic asshole with fucking identity and anger issues.

What's worse is meeting Lucifer himself, the person he looked up to all his life, doesn't know him.

It's not Lucifer's fault though.

[thebramblewood]

Lookbook for when you humanize Guidry and realize he's been fucking hot the entire time.

[messymoonmad]

I think you would make very good modern Epic the musical designs

You're wrong :

In this modern AU he is not human but was sentenced by zeus to spend 100 years in the human realm, powerless but still immortal.

All because he pissed him off and disrespected Xenia during a family banquet.

He is jobless and keeps getting refused in every interview because his ego is too big and his temper too short, and his CV too empty. So he does some small job here and there to "survive". He lives at @makotafi 's poseidon rent free (don't worry about the timelines this is all just for kicks and giggles)

Mako's doodle of the situation

[casscainmainly]

So. That time in Batgirl 2000 when Cass was dancing with her friend in Blüdhaven, am I remembering correctly that they were moshing???? Or did I make that up out of my hopes and dreams of punk (or another alternative subculture) Cass?

You are indeed correct, it was a mosh pit!!

Batgirl (2000) #63

I think it's funny we latched onto ballet when Cass actually seems to love all types of dance!!! Also we have THE Cass outfit of all time here, and also Zero is here I guess. This is a fun issue if anyone hasn't read it yet please check it out!!

[sergle]

I think if you're in a relationship that's anything less than ROCK FUCKING SOLID you should consider not messing with too many of your partners interests. You'll think ohh nooo I'm being a good partner engaging in the stuff they loveee we can bond over ittttt No. you don't want all your hobbies and shows and books covered in their stank.

[bestagons]

2012 | 2024

[starry-bi-sky]

yall ever think Shen Yuan went through like, internet withdrawal after being transmigrated into Shen Qingqiu? Like, he's canonically a NEET shut-in who did nothing but spend his time online, you can't tell me that for the first week or first few weeks of being SQQ he wasn't twitchy.

Like, reaching instinctively to his pockets for a phone that wasn't there, having an obsessive itch in the back of his mind that he should check and see if X or Y novel or webcomic has updated -- only to realize he can't anymore and being irritated by it. Wanting to go and see if there's new posts about this or that, but again realizing that he can't.

When he's bored or uncomfortable or just feels like wanting to escape he tries to go for his phone to distract himself, but oops! Not there anymore, and now he has to find a new and different way to distract himself from his feelings. And going through system notifications, quests, etc only does so much.

And there's that Tetris Effect too. SQQ makes a mistake while writing and instinctively goes to backspace on it except hey-ho that's not a keyboard and now he just dipped his pinkie into a bottle of ink or on a still-drying letter.

With him scrambling to fix his reputation and learn how to be a peak lord, I think his abrupt cold-turkey from all things internet would just be another straw on the camel's back that he promptly Ignores until it goes away on its own after he acclimates to his new surroundings.

[iheartmothz]

cuddly emercury + jaune

[intotheelliwoods]

@dianagj-art This is it, this is the dynamic <3 I love them