#reblogging here since this is where my creative shite's been going

[well-seasoned-dragonage]

Howdy Old Folks(and whoever comes across this list)! @cornfedcryptid here! In light of this shit that’s going on around us, and the toll it’s having on people and their creative process, I thought I would come up with a fun and easy ‘arts-n-crafts’ for everyone to work on at their own pace. This is primarily inspired by @faerieavalon​ and the fluff prompt tag thingy she made. I thought it was a great idea and wanted to expand upon it. I know right now a lot of us aren’t in the best mindset to work on our long fics, big art pieces, etc. But what better thing to work on than simple little diabeetus inducing foof!? lol

I’m hoping this list can be used by more than just writers...and it is for more than just the Dragon Age fandom. So please, feel free to use it to your hearts content! If you do, be sure to tag us so we can reblog and share your creativity!

Thank you and stay safe! <3

EDIT: also a HUGE thank you to @ranawaytothedas for making the banner.

So, I may or may not have adopted a pet...we’re parents now. 

Oh I’m sorry, were you reaching for that too?

Shit, I lost X. Has anyone seen my idiot? Alternatively, Y loses X and proceeds to play some variation of ‘Marco Polo’ until they find X.

Holiday gift exchange.

I saw this and thought of you.

I can’t sleep. Will you sing/tell me a story?

Quit moving! You’ve got something in your hair.

Listen, the weather is shite. You can just crash here tonight. 

It’s our anniversary so I wanted to do something special

Do you want to share?

Would you like to try it?

How does this taste?

Do you want one? I made them myself. 

Pfft! You should see your hair!

Would you like to dance?

Would you like to go to dinner sometime?

Do you want to stay the night?

Can I kiss you?

I’m pregnant

Will you marry me?

Shut up, you’re sick. Just let me take care of you already.

You’re comfy to sleep on

Put on something nice, we’re going out tonight!

I feel at home when I’m with you.

Are you going to finish that?

I’ll eat that, if you don’t want it.

I missed you.

Come closer.

Will you stay a little longer?

You smell really good.

I love it when you touch me.

I love the way you feel. 

You make me feel alive.

Shit! Your hands feel like ice.

You feel hot. Do you feel sick?

No, don't come closer. I’m sick.

Your breath leaves goosebumps on my skin.

Hey, it’s time to wake up. 

Oh God. I can’t believe it’s our wedding day. I think I’m going to be sick. 

Hey! What are you doing here?

It’s been so long since I last saw you. 

Just because I’m having trouble sleeping doesn’t mean you have to stay awake with me. 

Don’t get up, I’ll take care of the baby

Here, let me get that for you. 

Do you want me to hold them for you?

Can you hold this for a second please?

You just scared the piss out of me!

Stop making me laugh or I’m going to pee!

I know you miss home, so I tried to bring a little home here.

I don’t know how to tell you this, but you snore...A LOT.

Keep touching me like that and we’re going to be late. 

What can I do to convince you to stay in tonight?

I’ve got a surprise.

It’ll be an adventure.

You know, you’re cranky when you’re tired/hungry. 

What’s the rush?

I’m sorry. It’s only going to hurt for a second. I promise. 

You’ve got something on your face.

Oh look! A shooting star! Quick, make a wish!

You’re not wearing that outside. It’s freezing!

Promise you won’t laugh?

This is what you wanted right?

Stop! You’re making me blush!

I think I’ll die if you don’t kiss me.

What are you wearing?

Can I walk you there?

Do you want to go again?

I’d do it all over again, if it meant I could meet you.

Hey, it’s time for bed.

I am twelve kinds of confused right now. But fuck are you cute. 

Let’s get you out of those wet clothes.

If you don’t shut up, I’m going to make you shut up. 

It’s the first snowfall of the season.

I only ever see X smile when they’re with you. 

Come watch the meteor shower with me.

I want to go swimming.

Let’s go to the beach. 

We should take a vacation.

Why are you acting so calm!? I’m meeting your parents for the first time! What if they don’t like me? What if they don’t think I’m good enough?

This is all I ever wanted in life.

I never thought this is where I’d be one day. But I can’t imagine myself anywhere else now. 

Let’s give this a shot...you and me. 

Don’t flatter yourself.

Make me. 

Truth or dare?

What’s so funny?

You’re lucky you’re cute.

When you kiss me my brain goes stupid. 

Let’s stay in bed all day.

Let’s take a bath.

You’re so tense. Let me give you a massage.

The sound of your heartbeat reminds me that all of this is real.

I know you know that I like you.

I’ve never felt this way with anyone else before. 

Come and find me. 

I love you more.

I felt like I was surrounded by darkness until I met you. 

You make me want to be a better person. 

Can you teach me how to do it?

The kids are asleep and we have the rest of the evening to ourselves.

I also want to add @serial-chillr​‘s OC morning questions, because they too were part of my inspiration.

What’s the first thing your OC does when they wake up?

Is it the same as what they would prefer the first thing to be?

Up early or sleep late?

Do they have a morning routine? What is it?

What’s their favorite breakfast?

Someone starts talking to them before they’ve had their tea/coffee/beverage of choice. What happens?

[theliterarywolf]

Oh boi you went to Art Institute? I wanna hear your experience!

Oh, they didn’t even let me in through the door! 

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but here’s a rundown of my experience with the Art Institute here in SoCal since I did a complete write-up on here via a reblog a long while back.

So, when I was in my last few months of high school: bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, GPA Rank 18, I was convinced that I wanted to get into video game design. 

(Later on in life I’ve realized that what I really wanted to do was concept development and story-writing for video games, but I digress)

I initially wanted to attend The Academy of Arts in San Francisco but a combination of lack of school funds and my mother not wanting to support me going to the ‘modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah’ had me looking elsewhere.

And, wouldn’t you know it, the walls of my high school guidance-counselor office were plastered with posters and fliers for the local Art Institute (I say local but it was still, what, five cities away from where I went to high school).

So I applied... And I was accepted! And I begged my mother until the point of her ears bleeding to take me to the ‘Welcome New Students’ orientation that they were hosting. 

So my Aunt who had a better car and actually lived one city closer to the school (so, again, that would still make the school 4 cities away) offered to take us and come along. 

So we drive and drive until we finally get to the unassuming building that was the Art Institute... located in the middle of a business complex. Which is such a great sign for a place of higher education.

So we go in, get some complimentary box-packaged muffins, water bottles, and Nutrigrain bars (a great spread for a school wanting to show off their Culinary Arts program but, again, I was a naive babby mammoth), and were escorted into a small conference room with several other families to watch a demo reel of student work.

Which was some of the most depressing shite I have ever seen in my life, now that I think back on it.

So after that, the hosts of the orientation went on and on for a bit with their slogans of ‘Creative Education’ and ‘At the Art Institutes, we believe that Creativity is More than Just a Word’. At that point, however, my aunt who happens to be a middle school teacher in a neighboring school district is carefully trying to tell my mom ‘I... don’t think this is an accredited school’ and also asking me ‘Are you sure this is something that you want to do?’ 

Again, naive, bright-eyed me brushed her off and kept up my excitement. 

So, at this point, the hosts separated the potential students from their parents and families to give them small taster-courses of what they can expect upon starting. 

I was ushered into the animation room where the on-duty professor, bless his soul, actually seemed to be into what he was teaching. He had us do some small expression exercises with characters from the Mr. Men Show and he actually gave me a shout-out on my posing. 

So, giddy from that small taste, we were escorted back to our families. As I walked back to my mother and aunt I noticed that they were looking more than a little apprehensive about the whole thing. 

But I was far too giddy about everything. I was ready to sign up and get started! Then, of course, came the topic of tuition. 

This is where, to this day, looking back I am beyond disgusted with what happened. 

After the orientation and my ‘acceptance’, my mother and I were getting constant phone calls from Art Institutes. ‘We need to discuss money! So, about tuition..?! You wouldn’t want your admission to disappear would you~?’ So, my mother and I go back to the school on a different day after we had gotten our car fixed so it could drive longer distances without overheating. 

We walk into the school and are briskly pointed to the small cramped hallway that led to the lone Financial Aid office. So, after waiting for a few hours, the Financial Aid advisor finally calls us in. 

We sit down in front of her desk and, hey, the woman was a Nigerian! My mother’s Nigerian and I’m Nigerian-American! This was going to turn out great! 

... Allow me to provide a brief renenactment of the conversation we had.

F.A. Advisor: So why haven’t you filed for Financial Aid?!

Me: I... I don’t know how...

F.A. Advisor: What do you mean you don’t know how?! Aren’t you about to graduate?! How do you not know how to do something so simple?

Mother: Can you maybe calm down a bit? She has her heart set on this place, you could at least let her know how to go about doing so?

F.A. Advisor: I don’t have time for this. If you want to go to school, you need to fill out Financial Aid, okay?! So go do it!!

So my mother walks me out of the office but, a moment later, she goes back in and closes the door behind her. I sat there for fifteen minutes before the door slammed open: my mother exiting with tears in her eyes and harshly telling me that it was time to go and that I couldn’t go this school. 

All the while driving home I hated my mother for not being able to help me get into school. We had been through so much: homelessness, not having food to eat, our lives being threatened, her being tossed between jobs, me not having decent clothes to wear at times... I was so pissed that I couldn’t have this one thing. 

Even when, later on, I heard my mother talking to my aunt on the phone, sobbing that she had gotten on her knees and begged this woman to see if there was anyway she could think of me being able to apply for financial aid. 

My mother was a single-mom, didn’t have a Green Card or a social because my father, who is still in jail or whatever facility they have for sociopathic assholes, decided that he 1. Didn’t want my mother to be too independent and 2. Didn’t want to work with any ‘fucking white people’ on my mother’s immigration status. So, of course, I had no parental information to put on a FAFSA application. 

No FAFSA, my scholarship applications hadn’t come through, I had nothing. 

And the Art Institutes didn’t want to give me anything. No help, no chances, no ‘Creative Education Made More Affordable’.

They just wanted another warm body to take out $80,000 of loans for their For-Profit shenanigans.

If it wasn’t for one of the wife of an elder at the church we were attending at the time knowing the inner-workings of Financial Aid from her time as a school advisor, I probably would never have been able to get my Associate’s, let alone the Bachelor’s that I’m finishing up now. 

So, yes, that was my experience with the Art Institutes. 

And, in hindsight, I guess something was watching out for me. Because with all of the news of worthless degrees, mountains of debt, inept instructors, and the US government even suing the company that owns the schools, maybe I dodged a giant bullet.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

I’ve Evolved. Like a Pokemon, but Swearier.

Right. I just wrote a proper blog (a review of the excellent new film Get Out). Go read it before you read this one (if you haven’t already), because this blog entry is going to be self-indulgent naval-gazing. I feel like it’s important to address the fact that I reall haven’t been on Tumblr much lately (despite claimingI was going to start posting regularly a few weeks ago). This lapse isn’t deliberate, and I’m not abandoning y’all: it’s just the result of a number of factors coalscesing to keep me away from Tumblr.

Some of these factors are purely practical. My job involves writing and I’m also working on several books (two of which I need to finish and release by the end f next month because I foolishly set myself a deadline that was way nearer in the future than I thought it was, then told prospective reviewers and buyers about it). In short, I just don’t have a lot of creative energy left for blogging. Plus, I’m getting deeply acquainted with the world of magic and sleight of hand. The spare hours and half hours that I might once have spent writing a blog are now often spent with a pack of cards, a couple of chop-cups, some oversized coins and a wand.

However, there is another factor: energy. I’m left-leaning and generally quite liberal. I recognise and mostly care about the struggles of disenfrancised demographics. But I also refuse to give people a free pass if they do something wrong (or are just shite humans) just because they belong to one of those demographics. Tumblr seems to regard this attitude as an impossible paradox and reacts hostily to it. Plus, it’s is a controversy-generating machine anyway. I once got screamed at by over a hundred morons who mistook me for a racist because I pointed out Beyonce is an overrated, talentless hack (newflash: disliking one sub-part musician is not an endigtment on the ethnicity to which they belong). Similarly, I was once screamed at because I got mistaken for a sexist, because I suggested that maybe Fat Admirers in the Fat Acceptance community were entitled to a modicum of respect for chipping in. Not special treatment: just basic fucking respect. Oh, and because absolute cock-head Red3Blog forgot that ‘cunt’ is a gender-neutral insult here in Britain. Meanwhile, on those occassions when people correctly identified my politics as being left-leaning and liberal, I’d get screamed by genuine sexists and racists for defending the marginalised demographics who’d also been hurling abuse at me two weeks earlier.

I never minded this at the time. I still don’t. It’s just that, at the time, I actively thrived on controversy and conflict. I didn’t just pick fights with idiots because I couldn’t bite tongue: I picked fights with idiots because I enjoyed it. I loved the thought of infuriating the stupids so much that they’d take time out of their day to try-and-fail to harrass me. I loved generating hate then responding to it with epic put-downs and glittering witticisms that showed off just how much smarter than these people I really was. I delighted in using disgustingly biological ad hominen attacks just to watch my enemies whine about how I wasn’t responding their illogical, hateful ramblings logically. I particularly enjoyed the bit where I’d respond to them with a torrent of inventive invective, get them ready for a fight and then deny them their chance at catharsis by blocking them before they could reply, hammering home the message that they were only entitled to as much of my attention as I’m willing to give. I never harrassed anyone, but I laid traps for the kind dipshit who’d try to harrass me, and when they inevitably did, I’d do everything I just described and (invariably) come out on top. Those were the glory days.

Nowadays, poking arseholes with sticks doesn’t fill me with quite the same level of joie de vive. I haven’t suddenly turned into soppy pacifist flower-child. If I were to receive hate-mail or hate-reblogs over this blog, I’d extract a bit of amusement from pillorying the culprit like I used to do. But It’s not something that I’m that fussed about anymore. The main purpose of my blogs was always to make a point and make people laugh, but I also derivied motivation from the frisson of excitement that came with knowing the next thing I wrote might start a shit-storm. That frisson doesn’t entice me so much now that I’m a bit older and less full of testosterone. I’d rather create a new magic trick, or have a wank or binge-watch an entire sci-fi series on Netflix. I still enjoy blogging, but only when I have something funny or insightful to say.

Besides, I won. I got the first page of Google results for a time. I attracted comment from youtubers and redditors. I received fanmail from people telling me I’d made a positive difference to their lives and I pissed off all the people I set out to piss off. Meanwhile, the people who I consider symbolic of my two main groups of enemies have respectively wilted away and stagnated. Anonymouslayabout- the bigoted gobsite who used to bully fat folk on the web and who represented the rightwing, illiberal, secretly-self-loathing branch of the bell-end duolith- seems to have vanished. I think someone else is using her userame now (either that or its still her and she’s just taken all her objectionable bullshit down because she can’t stand the hatemail anymore. Who knows? Who cares?). The point is, she’s no longer a thing as far as I can tell. Meanwhile, Red3Blog- the lilly-livered, fake-feminist, smug toss-pot who represents the whiny, willfully-misunderstanding SJW branch of the aforementioned duolith- hasn’t changed or matured as a human at all since we crossed swords. It’s hard to tell from a blog I only glance at once every six months to a year, but he still seems to be the exact same hopeless, unloved manchild he was before... just slightly less relevant or cared-about by the rest of the internet than he used to be.

Of all that old mob, I’m the only one who’s evolved without quitting; become something more without abandoning who I was. I write on here less than I used to because my life is fuller and there’s more to me than once there was, yet I still stand by my beliefs. I still know I was right to stick up for the people I stuck up for and to savage the ones I savaged. I walked into a verbal and emotional combat zone and walked out unbowed and unscarred. The people who once hated me are either still stuck there because they’re incapable of change, or ran from it with their tails between their legs. Like I said, I win. If only by default.

Am I done with this blog? Fuck no. I don’t think I’ll ever be done. There are things still to talk about, reviews still to write, and knob jokes waiting to be made. There will probably even be times when I put on my old (entitely metaphorical) battle-armour and wade into the fray again, for old time’s sake or because something seems important. Just don’t expect me to resume my hectic, blog-every-day schedule any time soon. I got too much other shit to do. However, since I know I’ve been neglecting my avid readers, I will try to post some funny stuff and reviews over the next few days to make up for my long absences.