#long long text post

[maevesweirdart]

thinking about this juxtaposition between the human characters and the animal characters in Nope. the animals (jj, the chimp, the horses) are simple, as is natural. they instinctively know what makes them uncomfortable (sudden loud noises, eye contact, getting tricked into eating shit that isn’t food), and when their boundaries are violated, they are understandably angered. jj isn’t capable of understanding the profit-seeking machinations of the humans in its territory. it isn’t capable of signing a contract with jupe. when a crowd of humans appears inside an eye-shaped arena, it doesn’t know that jupe is expecting it to perform for them. it just goes “oh hey, it’s food!” and this isn’t a flaw on jj’s part—it’s a feature. oj and em know this. they’re trained animal handlers, who have spent their whole lives working with creatures that could kill them. they know better than to disrespect a horse or try to force it to meet human expectations. in order to get a horse to listen to you, you have to get on the horse’s level. so why did jupe expect a flying vore roomba from outer space to understand that it was morally wrong to eat people? because capitalism. we Live In A Society (bottom text) in which we’re trained to do unnatural things. we don’t run away from dangerous predators anymore—instead, we run towards them, cameras in hand, because if we survive, we might be able to sell the footage to some rich people in exchange for money. capitalism trains some—the working class—to disregard our own survival instincts and gamble with our lives, and it also trains others—the wealthy bourgeoisie—to expect others to do that for them. that’s not healthy, is it?

maybe it’s time we all returned to monke. (figuratively that is. i’m not an anarcho primitivist lol)

[prince-ashitaka]

Lets create a house where yelling means we’re having fun. When you hear a door slam you know it was accidentally pulled with too much strength, not slammed out of anger. When there is silence, it is Contentment, not another passive aggressive fight. The dog is no longer barking to protect, he simply just wants the cats to play with him. Let’s create a safe, warm environment that makes you feel like you can breathe, not hold your breath. Let’s stomp on the eggshells we use to tip toe on. Together we will make this house into a home. And welcome all with open arms into this kind and loving space.

[luzity]

first vs last appearances

[thesnadger]

I have a question about this image of Xanathar's Thieves Guild.

Why does he have sexily lounging elf boys?

I ask because I cannot imagine a beholder being attracted to anything other than itself. Does he just understand Sexily Lounging Elf Boys to be a status symbol, and he wants anyone who visits to know he can afford Sexily Lounging Elf Boys?

Maybe I'm the asshole here for assuming. Maybe these boyfriends are master tacticians here to advise Xanathar, they happen to like wearing leather pants and no shirts and I should be less quick to reduce them to sex objects.

I don't care, I love it, this is all I can think of every time I see it:

[jenderenvy985]

[iknityounot]

(Long post, sorry y'all)

A little more than two years ago now, my grandmother passed away. She and my grandpa had moved down to my home town a few years before so we could take care of them. I brought them groceries once a week, helped them write checks, fixed tvs, and found lost things. I was really close with my grandma.

In addition to her hilarious personality and dry wit, one of my favorite things about her was that she was a painter and a crafter like me! She used to crochet, and I took her to the craft store a couple of times so she could get more yarn and books on crochet. But her arthritis and the shaking in her hands kept getting worse, so she eventually had to stop.

She kept her most recent project, a granny square blanket, safely packed away in a plastic bin. She told all of us she was going to finish it one day.

Her hands never got better, and when she got sick, and we found out it was cancer, she rapidly deteriorated.

After she passed, I went to work helping my mom clean out my grandparents apartment so we could move my grandpa in with her. In our frantic cleaning, I found that bin again:

DOZENS of granny squares, dozens of half used skeins. I asked my mom what she wanted me to do with it, and she said she didn't care. I set it aside and later took it home.

Maybe a month later, that tumblr post about the Loose Ends Project was going around. It felt like a sign--I was never going to learn to crochet in order to finish my grandmother's blanket. But they might be able to help!

So I filled out the interest form. They got back to me SUPER quick. And maybe 2 weeks later, I was paired with volunteer in my state (only 2 hours away!) and the box of yarn, granny squares, and my grandmother's crochet hook were in the mail. That was at the end of January this year.

Over the next couple of months, my "finisher" emailed me regular updates on her progress, and asked me questions on my preferences for how she constructed the final blanket.

At the end of August, the blanket was done!

I had always intended the blanket to be a gift for my mother. So I cleaned it up, put it in the only bag I had big enough to fit it, and drove to my mom's. I gave the blanket to her and she was gobsmacked. I explained to her all about Loose Ends, and how someone volunteered to finish the piece for us. She was speechless. (I was quite pleased with this, because I am not the best at giving gifts, so this was a pretty exciting reaction!)

She said that it was the most thoughtful gift she had ever been given. She said "your grandma would love this". To which I replied, "yeah, I know she really wanted to finish it a couple of years ago". But that was when my mom dropped the bomb of a century on me--she told me that my grandma had started making those granny squares OVER 30 YEARS AGO. She had started the blanket when my grandpa was staying in the hospital, but that was back when my mom was younger than I am now! My grandma had packed them all away, planning on finishing it, when my grandpa was sent home from the hospital. Then it went from house to house, from condo in Chicago to their apartment in my hometown. All that time and my grandma had wanted to finish it, but couldn't. First because she was busy, then because she forgot how to do it, then because of her arthritis, and then because of the cancer. My mom said she had given up on expecting my grandma to finish it. 

She said I brought a piece of her childhood with her mom out of the past.

And really, all of this is to say, if you have seen or heard about the Loose Ends Project and have an uncompleted project or piece from a loved one who has passed away--these are your people. They were so kind and treated my project with such care. That box probably would have been found by my own grandkids one day if I hadn't heard about Loose Ends.

Five stars, absolutely worth it!

(From what I understand, you can sign up to volunteer too! If you have time to share, it might be worth checking out!)

[thatkinkyautistic]

Autism acceptance includes accepting all autistic manners of communication.

That means supporting autistic people who talk in a "very childish" way. (I do this a lot irl)

Autistic people who do "TV talking" (this means talking like a character from your favorite media,basically talking in quotes and copying their speech patterns,as far as I know)

Autistic people who use echolia.

Autistic people who are very awkward/quirky when they communicate.

Autistic people who are overly technical,or have very sophisticated and articulate speech.

Autistic people who mumble.

Autistic people who talk really fast.

Autistic people who can't control their tone of voice/inflection.

Autistic people who talk in a monotone voice.

Autistic people who use different kind of sounds,or body language to communicate.

Autistic people who talk slowly and draw out their syllables.

Autistic people who use a lot of sentance fillers.

Autistic people who use Aac devices,communication cards,etc etc.

Edit: acceptance of nonverbal autistics is also necessary. Nonverbal people deserve love,respect,acceptance,accommodation and support.

[shadowtraveled]

"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.

but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)

mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…

the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.

every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.

first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic

which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.

which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.

the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.

walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?

well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.

you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?

it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.

when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.

and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.

kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.

yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.

[wearenotjustnumbers2]

This news surfaced yesterday and I just want to say this isn't new. This happened and has been reported more than once. There are also the Yemeni Jewish children who were kidnapped from their mothers by Ashkenazi "nurses", who claimed that the baby is dead, and diagnose the mother with hysteria/mental disorder after.

The lack of regard for people of color in Israel shouldn't come as a surprise at all. How many poc do you see in the government/ knesst despite the number of Ethiopian and Yemeni jews?

They're creating an all white country, this is colonizer behavior 101, the world just turned a blind eye.

[violent138]

During Tim's early days, the principal called Bruce once to report that Tim had a lot of bruises.

Bruce, pretty sure he knows where this is going: "Well there's a reasonable explanation for this--"

Tim, kind of sheepish: "It's from the Bo staff."

Bruce, turning fully on the chair to look at him.

Tim, fidgeting a little: "I've been practicing kind of a lot with it recently."

Bruce, suddenly incredibly proud: "Yes," turns back to the suspicious principal. "He insists on getting into these really niche extra curriculars. For college."

Principal, looking between them: "Bo staff? What is that, exactly?"

Tim: "I can show you if you like? Do you mind?"

The principal shrugs and Tim steps out, returning with a broom.

He does a one handed figure eight spin and wipes the Principal's mug right off the desk, causing it to shatter on the floor.

Tim: "Oh shit."

Bruce, speaking over the principal, standing up: "Excellent, just loosen your grip a little more."

Tim, rolling his eyes: "It's a pretty basic move B, and you know it--"

Bruce, excited that Tim's taken an interest: "Just the beginning, tonight we'll practice some real moves, build your repertoire in defense and offense--"

Tim, grinning: "I'd like that, I've also been working on--"

Principal, clearing her throat: "I think I've seen all I need to see."

[amalasdraws]

https://www.tumblr.com/bigmammallama5/732632789726478336?source=share do you have any tips on how to detect ai and deepfakes?

Good question and I'm gonna be honest, it's not always easy and it will only get harder and harder. I'm just an artist who has spent their personal time to dive into this topic and study images. I'm still learning and there is a lot I don't know. But let me show what I know. This will be long, but I will make a summary at the end! So far, even with ai having become better and better there are still almost always some things wrong with an image, and they all have a very specific look to them. So let me try to show you some and point out some of them.

As we all know, a biggest struggle ai had were hands. And even though here and there we still see messed up hands, I say "had", because the hands is actual a good example on how ai is improving and will only get better. Still, looking at pictures that show more hands is always worth it, because somewhere in the back there will be most likely at least one messed up hand.

Another issue a lot of ai still has is hair though!

It's very obvious still in many ai "drawings" and in those otherwise well rendered portraits. Hair starts to blend with the ears a lot, or with the clothes.

There is also often this very odd look between something too sharp and way too blurry

There is often a very specific texture to the hair. I actually do not know the artistic or specific name for it. I can only describe it as this weird sharp feeling that makes it look oddly pixely, and then you have areas where it's very blurry. And the kind of loops and almost flame like looking hair we see in the last pic out of the three here is also something very common with ai.

As an artist I know we make mistakes too! The way I draw hair is flawed too! But it's not only that it's flawed here, but it's following always the same pattern and falls into the same issues over and over again, no matter who is "creating" the image. Those flame like loops are a common one, next to the odd blends and weird sharp and blurry textures.

But ai is getting better, and we not only have "art" and something that tries to be a drawing/painting, but photos too.

A lot of those "photos" have a very specific texture and look to them! Again, it's not always the mistakes, but the very specific optic too. A lot of the images are oddly smooth, too rendered, with always blurry backgrounds. And when you look closer at the background you will see the mistakes! The crowd behind Jesus is a hot mess once you look closer. Bob Marley's hair has the same issue than I described before. Lincoln is surrounded by people with messed up hands and don't even get me started on the faces behind Caesar.

So a lot of ai images look alright on a first and quick glance, but as more time you spend with them, as more mistakes you will notice. The wehre is Waldo of ai horror.

And those "photos" shared here are still very obvious. Not just the mistakes and messed up details but the very specific aesthetic too.

Those images get better and better and as less details you have, as less mistakes you have!

With photos like this it becomes harder and harder. There are not many details and no hands. Not many mistakes can be made. Also the very obvious plastic looking smoothness isn't so much here anymore. It kinda still is...but differently. And always the blurry background!! Sometimes the hair is still a giveaway. Collars and clothe straps are also often still a giveaway upon close look. As is jewelry. Earrings will be different and necklaces often don't go all the way around, just end, or blend with the hair or clothes.

Often details on jewelry is also blurry and not shown properly. This is a trick with many details. With jewelry, batches, hair, ears, text. So it's often blurred out and not shown properly because ai doesn't know what to really show here.

It's often really just the small details and when we scroll down quickly we will miss them. Like the wedding ring on the middle finger, the pens on top of a closed pocket, the batches that are always blurry, messed up faces that blend with a blurry background.

And sometimes it's so subtle that I could only really tell that right is the ai image in comparison to the real photo on the left. The real photo shows hands clearly and even when things are blurred out it doesn't feel that it's done to hide things. The ai image on the right hides the hands. There is also a very dead look in the eyes :D

And here I could only tell because the text in the back doesn't make sense. Even blurred out we should be able to make out something here

And after seeing a lot of ai images I recognize the kind of blurred out bg in combination with a very smooth and well rendered foreground/characters.

And here the only giveaway is a closer look at the backgrounds as well

To summarize it:

Ai and fake news rely on a fast living world. We are being bombarded with tons of information and messages daily and we scroll past quickly. But the best tool, for now, in detecting ai is taking our time! Those images get better and better but so far there are still always some things off!! Especially in the background!

Hair. Often weirdly smoothed out and oddly sharp at the same time

Hair often blends with the ears or the clothes

Details are blurred out.

Jewelry doesn't match (example earrings). Details on metal often blurred out and never shown. Necklaces blend with hair or the clothes, and don't go around the neck.

Background is always blurred out.

In this blurred mess there are often hidden very messed up faces and/or hands.

A very specific smooth and yet too sharp/too rendered aesthetic combines with an always blurry bg.

Text, especialyl in the background, is not legible and doesn't make sense.

Backgrounds are often (so far) the dead giveaway. Somewhere in the back things become muddled and messed up. This shows also very well in ai decor/architecture. There will be odd lines that don't align or align too well. Curtain poles that end in the furniture, a plant that is behind a lamp suddenly having leaves in front of the lamp. As longer you look as more you will notice.

Conclusion:

Take your time with images! Sit with them! Especially when it's framed as important and political news. Is it ai and propaganda, or did it really happen? Don't fall for the quick buzz and outrage! Some things are obvious right away but with others you have to take your time. And it's time you have! If you are still unsure if a pic is real or not, do some research on top. Image reverse search. Can you find it anywhere else? Are other news outlets sharing it? Does the image/message make sense? For example there is now a deepfake of Bella Hadid voicing support for Israel. Ask yourself, does this make sense? If it feels out of line compared to previous behavior, do some research! Media literacy is not just as being able to recognize a fake or real right away, but being able to do research. To question things! Don't just take every post online for face value. Even when shared by a mutual you trust. They might have been tricked!

There are so many information online and it's great to have access to so information, but it's also difficult to wade through all of it. Media and truth are a weapon and it's being twisted and bend used to manipulate. Always has! But ai and so many people being able to post and share things, it becomes bigger and bigger and more dangerous. So don't just take everything that is handed to you and share it further no questions asked. Media literacy and being able to think for ourselves and do the research is important!! And as research becomes harder and harder, as sources are being messed up with ai and other fake news, it's even more important to sit with the images and study them. See the flaws, the mistakes. Compare it to other news and images.

This got long, and I started to ramble at the end. Sorry But I hope this helped

[holdoncallfailed]

i'll never get over the way brooklyn 99 woobified the literal NYPD what the hell was that. and everybody ate it up with a spoon too

[theworldgate]

I have to explain what is going on in the UK, because it is absurd.

So, this is Gary Lineker:

He's known for a fair few things over here. He was a very good (association) footballer, playing for England in the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, winning the Golden Boot in 1986, and managing to never get a single yellow card in his playing career. He played for Leicester City, Everton, Barcelona, and Tottenham, before finishing his career in Japan. But if you aren't in your mid 30s, you probably know actually know him him for a couple of other things. The first is the role of spokesman for another Leicester icon, Walkers Crisps (which are sort of equivalent to Lays, but hit different), as pictured above. Despite being a notably clean player, he used to play a cheeky serial crisp thief. I don't think he's done that for well over a decade, but his ads were on the telly a lot when I was a kid and it's a bit like learning that the hamburglar was an incredibly clean (American) football player or something.

The second thing Gary is widely known for is having presented Match of the Day, the big football program on the BBC, the sort-of state broadcaster, since 1999. He is, incidentally, very well paid for this (though with a consensus that he could get even more if he went to one of the non-free-to-view broadcasters because he is very good at the job). He also has a twitter account. And political opinions. So, the UK government has got itself dead set upon doing heinous stuff that will totally somehow work to prevent people who want to come to the UK making the perilous crossing of the Channel (between England and France). By heinous, I mean "openly advertise that they won't attempt to protect victims of modern slavery" stuff. It's very obviously using a legal hammer to victimise a marginalised group of people in order to win votes. And, uh, I should clarify that by "legal" I mean "using the passage of laws" - the policy is, in addition to all the other ways it's awful, probably incompatible with the Human Rights Act and the UK's international law obligations. Gary, top lad that he is, objected to this. On Tuesday 7th March, he made a quote Tweet of a video of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, bigging up the policy, he wrote "Good heavens, this is beyond awful.". This got a bunch of backlash from extremely right-wingers, and then he made the tweet that really got him in trouble (with right-wingers): "There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?".

Now, I am not actually subjecting myself to watching a video of Suella Braverman bigging up a cruel policy to say whether the specific comparison of the language to 1930s Germany is accurate. But needless to say, Ms Braverman was amongst the many figures on the right of UK politics objecting to Gary's rhetoric. And here's the part where a fact about the BBC comes in: it is nominally neutral and impartial (and so, of course, is routinely accused of bias from all sides but particularly the right-wing), and has something of a code for its contributors to this effect. Now, that code has previously been applied to Gary Lineker, over a comment about whether governing Conservative Party would hand back donations from figures linked to the Russian regime. But it generally hasn't been applied too strongly to people like Gary, whose roles have nothing to do with politics (such as presenting a "here's what happened on the footie today" show), on the basis that, well, their roles have nothing to do with politics. However, when directly asked about whether the BBC should punish Gary Lineker for his tweets, government figures basically went "well, that's a them problem". But a couple of days passed, and it seemed like Gary's approach of "standing his ground because he did nothing wrong" was working and everything would die down. He was set to get 'a talking to' but not much more than that. The Conservative right, after all their fire and fury earlier, had gotten bored and moved onto something else. And then, on Friday 10th March, the BBC announced that he would be suspended from hosting Match of the Day this weekend. But it could still go ahead, because there are, like, other hosts! Except, well, funnily enough, when you take a beloved figure off air, for making a fairly anodyne tweet, no one wants to be the scab who actually takes up the role of replacing him. Gary's two co-hosts, Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, said that they would not appear without him. People who (co-)host Match of the Day on other days followed suit. The net result is that Match of the Day is currently set to air without hosts, BBC commentary, or global feed commentary. And the solidarity shown to Gary Lineker, over what is very flagrantly actual cancel culture and an attack on freedom of speech (the logic implied is that institutional impartiality requires that no one say anything too critical of the government ever), has continued to grow. The BBC has pretty much been unable to run pretty much any live sports content today, and has resorted to raiding the BBC Sounds archive to fill the sports radio channel. And, as of 17:30 on Saturday 11th March, the situation shows no signs of improvement, though some are calling for the Chairman Richard Sharp, who is separately facing corruption allegations, to resign (yes I linked to the BBC itself there, there is nothing, nothing, the BBC loves more than going into great detail about how much the BBC sucks).

[dice-wizard]

Okay writers listen up

I'm gonna tell you about how I wrangled my shitbird brain into being a terrifying word-churning engine and have written over 170K words in under a year.

I wanna be clear that before unlocking this Secret Technique I was a victim of my unmedicated ADHD, able to start but never finish, able to ideate but not commit and I truly and firmly believed that I'd never write a novel and such a thing was simply outside of my reach.

Now I write (and read!!) every day. Every. Single. Day. Like some kind of scriptorial One Punch Man.

Step the First

Remove friction between yourself and writing.

I personally figured out how to comfortably write on my phone which meant I didn't have to struggle with the insurmountable task of opening my laptop.

I don't care if this means you write in a Discord server you set up for yourself, but fucking do it. Literally whatever makes you write!

(if you do write somewhere that isn't a word processor PLEASE back your work up regularly!)

Step the Second

Make that shit a habit. Write every day.

For me, I allow myself the grace that ANY progress on writing counts. One sentence? Legal. Five thousand furious hyperfixated words? Also legal.

Every day, make progress. Any progress.

I deleted Twitter from my phone and did my best to replace doomscrolling with writing. If I caught myself idly scrolling I'd close whatever I was looking at and open my draft and write one (1) sentence until I made THAT a habit, too.

Step Two-point-Five

DO NOT REWRITE. If you are creating a first draft, don't back up or restart. Continous forward motion. Second drafts and editors exist. Firsts are for ripping the fucking thing out of your brain.

If you're working on revisions after an editor or beta readers or whoever has given you feedback, then you can rewrite that's OK (and it counts as your writing for the day!)

Step the Third

Now that you've found a comfortable way to write and are doing it every day, don't stop. Keep doing it. Remember, just one sentence is all you need. You can always do more, but if one lousy sentence is all you can manage then you're still successfully writing.

Remember: this is what worked for me. Try things until you find what works for you.

You can do it. I believe in you.

[wellship]

Alright, here's another little 40yo zosanzo comic idea that wouldn't leave me alone... "A chef's gotta control his heat", OR: how the strongest husbands in the world flirt

[demigods-posts]

the way percy just leaps for annabeth the second he sees her being pulled toward the pit. this girl was descending into literal hell. a place the gods themselves wouldn't dare to go. and without hesitation. he chose her over everything else.