#recently what i've been working on has felt very basic and very flat

[lit-in-thy-heart]

coming to the conclusion that trying to write fic again might make me feel more confident in my own abilities when it comes to other writing

[genericpuff]

Hey so I have a question-

Is Rachel even contributing to LO's art anymore? Like, at all?

CAUTION: MILD FASTPASS SPOILERS AHEAD !!!

I've talked at length about the 'tells' of each assistant and artist, and while it doesn't guarantee that I can tell exactly who drew each panel, there's one thing there's been a lot less of in the most recent episodes that have caught my attention - things that I know Rachel would typically contribute.

And most of it comes down to her lineart.

The shading was always her, no doubt about that, you could tell with how consistently awful it is, how she would take actual decent flats from her assistants and proceed to butcher them with muddied shading.

AmyKim89's flats vs. after Rachel's gotten her hands on them:

(seriously Rachel why tf did you darken Persephone's legs here, it looked so much better before ??)

But there was also her lineart which, at first, I didn't realize who was drawing it. It didn't show up super often in LO but it was always very noticeable when it did so I knew it had to be someone on the team doing it:

The thickness of the lines and the extra little strokes added in along the knuckles and bends, that wasn't something that was really common in LO at this point... at least it hasn't been since S1:

And when comparing it to the lineart she used to do in The Doctor Pepper/Foxglove Show:

(look at the mouth in The Doctor Foxglove Show vs. Hera in the pilot version of LO, they're literally the same)

So yeah, it was certainly the revelation to discover that that one instance of "weirdly detailed lineart" wasn't one of her assistants having a little extra fun, it was Rachel herself. It was already so uncommon for her to contribute all the way back in S2 that her contributions seemed to be more of the exception rather than the norm.

And since seeing the art that's been in the newest FP episodes following the return of the series... is Rachel even drawing at all anymore? Because lately the lineart has felt very thin, in a way that I can't tell if it's her assistants just doing all the lineart now or if she's trying to emulate S1 LO more by using less lineart. But S1 didn't have thin lineart, it had very thick lineart, BUT only being used where necessary to emphasis shadows and depth.

Now the lineart feels very... dinky? Especially when you look at the eyelashes.

That said, there are moments from S1 that had similarly 'dinky' lineart, so take this with grains of salt. It still didn't feel as dinky though as it does today where the lines are practically non-existent in how thin they are.

There are also times when you can tell they're really trying to emulate that S1 look, the pieces are there but they aren't being put together very well:

So yeah at this point I wouldn't even be shocked if all Rachel's doing at this point is scripting and roughs. And considering there are definitely times where she'll just draw without knowing what to write, the 'scripting' is also practically non-existent. It's just her leaving her roughs off to the last second for her assistants to whip out with very little time to pay attention to what's being submitted.

Once again it's Rachel fundamentally missing the point of the criticism that's being made of her work. She's trying to forcefully emulate something that she didn't even have a process behind. I can attest as someone who's been trying to do studies of her past work to recreate it as faithfully as possible through Rekindled, it's very difficult to achieve the 'old LO' look because 'old LO' was literally just Rachel slapping down brush strokes until they looked good, there was no specific process or guidelines that she followed, she just made things look textured and colorful. Everything else was basically up to her figuring out what actually looked good, with panels often having their own vibes separate from others in isolation of one another.

Now she's trying to replicate that look while missing the point entirely that it's not something she can really replicate anymore. Though we do get the odd panel that's way closer to the point, those panels have one thing that she's clearly not putting into the comic as a whole anymore - love and effort.

(fr this panel is so gorgeous but I feel like at this point it was more sheer luck because of how rare it is to see panels like these nowadays, this feels like an accident LOL)

Case in point, this honorable mention towards Persephone's outfit which is literally just a color-swapped version of the sketch that Rachel posted to Blue Sky that got meme'd to death in the ULO sub:

Did you catch that though? The weird dark patch over her boob and the gap in the lineart of her cleavage?

That's because they copy pasted the first panel and then erased out the hands, but missed the part of the hand shading that was overlapping the breast and the gap in the lineart.

I shit you not, Rachel coming up with memes on Blue Sky that she's scraped out of shows she watched 20 years ago is basically the full extent of her writing at this point.

Haha take a thing and make it bigger! So funnyyyy!

(seriously Rachel's 'humor' feels like it's stuck in 2010)

Yep, you're really earning that #1 NYT Bestseller label that you haven't even gotten since Volume 3, Rachel. Put your hand down, there are no high fives for you here.

[rookrecurring]

I don’t know where you’re at with this question or how often you’ve been asked it, but how are you doing these days? What have you been up to? I did a triple take when you started posting again and it’s good to see your art again! I hope you’ve been well.

—longtime RMR fan

Hi! This is such a kind message, I appreciate you checking in. I feel like I've been offline for so long that I'm always surprised to hear anyone remembers me or Red Moon Rising at all, haha. I've received a few emails here and there from former readers over the years which I've replied to, but I think it's probably time to say something more public in case anyone else has similar questions.

I tried and completely failed to keep this concise - sorry for rambling all over your relatively simple ask, but the long and short of it is: I'm doing pretty ok! Life is confusing and difficult! More under the cut!

In all honesty, I burned out very badly while working on Red Moon Rising. The tipping point unfortunately coincided with the Kickstarter for the print version (way back in 2017), but in retrospect it was a long time coming.

Shocking no-one, webcomics basically pay nothing and I was treating it as a job on top of the commission and freelance work I was paying the bills with, and in the end it just kind of crushed me. I became very overwhelmed with the work required to get the comic ready for print in the time that followed, so I never quite gave myself space to recover from the burnout because I felt such an obligation to fulfill the Kickstarter - people had paid good money for this and I wanted them to receive the books they had been promised.

The good news these days is that the Kickstarter is more or less all the way there. My publisher has been an absolute saint this entire time, checking in with me about the work without ever being demanding or pushy, and a few months ago a box arrived at my flat with all three volumes (consisting of the first 300-ish pages) of Red Moon Rising in print.

It's hard to be ecstatic after such a tiring journey to put it all together, but I'm proud of what we made. I can't overstate what a great job I think my publisher has done and how kind they've been to me - they received a lot of flak from people about the massive delays and never once threw me under the bus or pressured me to work harder or faster.

Regarding RMR's future: the website is currently down, but it shouldn't be for long. I've had some help from a friend recently (a recurring trend that I'm very grateful for) and the site should be back online soon more or less as it was. Pages, commentary, comments, everything.

However, the comic will remain on semi-permanent hiatus - never say never, but for the moment I've moved on.

I'm sure this isn't a surprise considering the last page was posted six years ago, but I hope it's not too disappointing for anyone. I always thought I would come back to it sooner or later, but I still feel like I need some space.

-

On an even more personal note, it's been a crazy few years. I think everyone has had a difficult time recently what with the… well, everything. I've been through a lot of health problems, some very difficult housing and financial situations, and I also came out as gay and asexual to my friends and family, and now to anyone who happens to be reading this.

Fortunately I have no horror stories regarding this last point, everyone around me has been beyond supportive and kind. I think the main takeaway I have from this period of my life is how amazing my friends are. I could probably fill this post to the character limit talking about the lovely people in my life and the numerous kind things they've done for me. I'm in a very good place right now thanks to them.

So in a post-Kickstarter, post-RMR world I'm at a bit of crossroads these days. I feel like my burnout has finally more or less faded and I've quietly been up to all sorts of small things.

I spent a lot of this year learning Japanese to an intermediate level (mostly through watching hundreds of episodes of Super Sentai shows in pure Japanese), something that didn't occur to me I would ever be capable of until I started doing it

I've been composing more orchestral music and sending it to like two people

I did a game jam!

I picked up Python programming recently and am trying to create a program to act as a music composition aid

I speedran learning Blender last year for a job application and made exactly one (1) piece using it that went so well I'll probably never draw a building by hand ever again

I've been playing a lot of DnD and other tabletop RPGs and made quite a bit of art related to those that I never posted anywhere

My biggest freelance project of the year was doing all the art for a friend's board game project that I'm cautiously excited about - it should be seeing the light of day some time next year

Basically I'm approaching some sort of critical mass of "uhhh maybe someone on the internet might like to see what I'm up to if I actually posted it" and now I'm confronting the scary emotions of once again being visible online. Yet another friend has offered to help me set up some kind of art stream in the near future and I think I might actually work up the nerve to do it.

-

Compared to 2017 the internet now is obviously a very different place and it's quite intimidating to step back into it if I'm being honest. It feels like there's much more pressure on Cultivating A Brand™ and I can already tell I'm going to be completely terrible at it because that pressure to be a consistent Content Creator™™™ totally smashed my brain in before and I'm not interested in going there again.

On the other hand, I appreciate that someone who is interested in seeing my handful of bird drawings one month might not also be interested in seeing my Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger fanart the next. I don't really know what to do about that except post these things anyway, because otherwise they're just piling up on my hard drive.

So that's it, really! My life is a lot more stable these days and I'm tentatively planning on posting more stuff here and possibly other places too. Thanks again for the ask, and sorry for the impromptu novel!

[silvertherogue715]

Hey. It's been a hot minute since i've posted any art. I really just post for myself, but i felt especially proud of the progress ive made over the course of (many) months designing the Sunstar of my BrainrotAU. Feel free to disregard! I'm just gonna ramble. Art will be included in the 'keep reading' section though.

I didn't want to deal with uploading the actual art files, and just used snippet to capture pieces of my art instead. The pictures could be irregularly large or small as a result--I don't have a good way to control then when using snippet. Sorry! Some old art of Sunstar.exe (not in order):

So, as you can see above, a lot of blue. It's kind of overpowering, honestly, and it took me a while to figure out I needed to start making changes to his color palette.

This was his first half body reference sheet. A ton of blue. Also my only REF of him with his back showing. I haven't updated his back design yet, but the final product will be much different.

Eventually, I decided to make his shoulder-braiser things orange instead of blue, as well as the sun-like gem on his helmet. I also started working out any built-in flaws I wanted to force his character to work around--like his hands being constantly on fire, or extremely hot. This just means he has to be extremely careful touching anything or anyone. It's not something he can just "turn off". Also, I think this was my first attempt at a proper full body design for him. It's fine for a second first attempt, and I was happy with it for a few months, but eventually I started thinking it shared the bulky OG robot master traits, rather than the 'netnavi' look I was wanting.

I started tinkering with his colors again, but only made minor changes. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what was 'off' to me without a proper full body to experiment on, but I very rarely have the willpower to make one. Some of these expression snippets were more helpful for me to use to at least get a read on exactly how expressive he can be in the AU, if he wanted to. Another big thing this helped me realize was how limited his expressions felt with the current colors (like his eyelashes), especially with how dark his face was. It made his nose/mouth harder to see. I end up making it a lighter shade in future doodles. Oh, and I wanted to start integrating pieces of Duo.exe's design into him as well--like the flat nose.

Woe, Sunterra doodle be upon ye. I need to finish this some day, but a big thing this helped me identify were: 1.) I desperately need to work on poses. 2.) I needed to figure out how to give Sunstar a "soft" look. In the expressions practice above, this was one of his faces i really struggled to get down. Still working on that. 3.) Another reminder he was too clunky to match a normal Navi design. Terra looks much more 'navi'-like. I needed to do a whole ass reboot for Sunstar from top-down. Anyway! The most recent stuff will be below. A few (bad) attempts:

And then I basically went "screw it" and went goblin mode at a full body attempt. Here's what I finally ended up with :")

For now I've decided to stick with a (mostly) cool/silver base with some warm orange and yellows mixed in in (hopefully) unobtrusive ways. Maybe this will change in the future, but for now I'm happy with his design :)

The orange on the bottom of his cape is meant to be a fire-y design, but I'm too tired to refine it (or anything else) further. Hopefully I'll have more art to update. eventually.

If you made it this far, thanks for sticking around, lol.

[northropi]

my art's been in a weird place forever because like... ok let's just talk about some stuff

as the name of the sideblog alludes to, i'm colorblind, presumably protanopia (all i know clinically is that i definitely have something but just qualitatively judging how things look vs how things look to me i think it's red-deficiency, so protanopia, the rare kind hooray!!!), and thus coloring is always a pain. i simply don't understand how a lot of that works and so kinda screwed myself in the long run i guess by never advancing past sketches with a lot of my art. my shading is lackluster and even if i had the colors right i lack the inuition for how lighting affects them.

only recently was i presented with the idea that just using patches in a translucent black layer was actually not good, and yeah that explains certain things that felt off, but... how does a linear flat decrease in light availability impact saturation? what? i don't even know whether the tip i heard recommended to make it go up or down and it's all really muddied by the fact that obviously everyone has different techniques like this one person who used bands of higher saturation around the main shading patch and when i HAVE to outsource my VERY PERCEPTION OF COLOR to OTHER PEOPLE that is REALLY CONFUSING.

One thing people say every time it comes up is "oh! art by someone who's got a skewed color perception would be cool actually!" And maybe as a one-off gimmick but for my entire generally sorta realistic/surreal body of work, no, no that'd just have tanks that are pink when they should be grey, that sucks and I'm not doing that.

but THEN come the actual problems with just how i draw. i'm really not in the habit of using guides, changing lineweights... like i recently read the Wikipedia article on Executive Dysfunction between projects at work and got to the part where it said the example of just turning in the rough draft as the final draft and i was like "oh. yeah. i do that." having pen pressure sensitivity is really all i have there because my brain just doesn't want to work that into how i function. perspective can be shaky but hey who's good at it anyways? i feel like i've got a good conception of form in spite of this and that probably is thanks to the fact that i was schooled as an engineer so like, yeah, that's... that's my job.

Part of these habits are certainly to do with my current life situation. I don't have the stability in my life to sit down and perform practice art, or to spend very long periods of time on one piece. I don't have the overall mental fortitude or whatever you'd call it to pick up an unfinished piece the next day after sleeping on it for a while so it's sort of do or die. I don't have the self-awareness in the moment to recognize I'm screwing up and I do not have and cannot afford the patience to slow down and fix things. Maybe there's a day some time soon, but never soon enough, where I'll really be able to dissect it all and come out better, but the prerequisite to that is to basically purchase my own fucking house and regain control of my schedule and space. It must sound like I blame a lot of my failings on that but, holy shit, this place just erodes me.

and then there's the fucking technical stuff. sometimes it really does feel like i'm playing catch-up to where i was on paper, and the fact that i don't know how brushes work, make little effort to optimize my brushes, and have never downloaded brush packs from anyone else (can you just use those? is there a credit thing????) probably really compounds this. making that animation stumped me on several levels because i had all the frames i needed but just couldn't put them together- and once i had them i attempted to change some stuff and it just broke things.

In honesty while I'm getting better at internalizing compliments it's very clear people like me for what I depict rather than my ability to depict it well, and I'm proud of that, but sometimes I start feeling old and like I'm never going to really learn anything from this point and that hurts.

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

Hi! Your tags abt the implied Cassie & Donna road-trip really piqued my interest about trial of the amazons! I haven’t read any recent WW stuff. Is there a reading order you would recommend (like starting with nubia), or should I just go straight into it?

Oh god, okay. I do one hundred percent recommend reading the recent Nubia series/one-shots because they are very good, despite the ToA connection. Because Trial of the Amazons, on the other hand...

There are things that I find very interesting about it. Overall, though, I think it showed a real lack of imagination and was crammed into too small of a space to actually effectively tell the story it wanted to tell, if that makes sense. For being a plotline tacitly about grief and revenge and complicated inter-Amazon politics, it had very little space to actually give the characters room to breathe or explain why some of the political stuff was even like... a big deal. Everyone felt like they got a couple panels apiece to mourn and then plot things were happening, except for when Donna and Diana then got a couple panels to be furious instead of sad. (Cassie Sandsmark does do a detective bit that's the highlight of the whole event, though.)

The aforementioned Cassie-Donna stuff takes place in the Artemis: Wanted one-shot that follows Trial of the Amazons, and it also is like. Mediocre at best, although I did actually like it better than the rest of ToA. (There's also a follow-up Hippolyta one-shot, I think Olympus: Reborn was its title? which I liked quite a bit.)

I'm not gonna say don't read ToA, because I've definitely read worse comic storylines, but I just wanted to prepare you for the fact that it is a comic event which had some interesting potential that ultimately fell flat. (So like... same as most comic events.)

One hundred percent read the Nubia stuff, it's great, and it does set the scene for current Themysciran politics. Arguably you should also read the Yara Flor Wonder Girl series (it's like 7 issues total) to get a feel for her whole deal, but again it's like. Not great. I like Yara a lot, and I like the idea of a third tribe of Amazons a lot, but again. The execution. (Art is pretty though.) And there is a Wonder Woman annual that I didn't read until after ToA that turned out to be the villain's introduction, lol, so make sure you don't miss that. (Just double checked because that short box happens to be sitting right next to me rn, and it's the 2021 annual.)

If you want to take a gander at modern WW in general, I do actually overall like a lot of what has been going on in the main Wonder Woman title for the last several years (some of it's been really good, some of it's been unimaginative but inoffensive, but very little of it has been truly BAD), although caveat that I'm always six+ months behind and now Tom King is writing it, and I already know I'm going to dislike the stuff he's doing. (The basic concept (Amazons as outlaws) sucks, and I hate the way he writes dialogue. 🤷‍♀️)

That was borderline stream of consciousness, but I hope you found it... at all helpful. OH, and I just read the Donna-centric Tales of the Titans issue (#3, they're self-contained one-shots so no need to grab the rest) and really liked it, although I'm not in any way shape or form a Donna expert (literally picked it up hoping it would tell me what her current canonical backstory is because I have no idea; and it mostly didn't, but I liked the character work)

[chthonic-cassandra]

Recent books, fiction -

- Meryem Alaoui, Straight from the Horse's Mouth (trans. Emma Ramadan) - novel about a sex worker in contemporary Casablanca, written in rambling and irreverent first person. This was engaging at first but I lost the thread midway through when it went off in a very different direction than I expected and the relationships between the protagonist and her fellow sex workers, which were central to the first section of the book, became secondary to a plot line about the protagonist unexpectedly starring in a film. Interesting and worth reading, but not in my opinion wholly successful.

- John le Carre, Silverview - I am really not very familiar with spy fiction, but I've been very gradually exploring le Carre; this is my third, and probably not the best choice to read so early in my exploration of his work, but it was at the library and so I went for it. This is le Carre's final, posthumously published novel, and it has an interesting, circling plot structure which reminded me, peculiarly enough, of Iris Murdoch. I didn't enjoy it very much while reading it, but it's growing up on me with contemplation. I'll keep exploring, maybe come back to this when I have more context.

- J. Anderson Coats, Spindle and Dagger - a book for me!!! Someone here recommended it to me, though I can't rightly remember whether it was @amending-death or @pearlsthatwereeyes. Either way, it was a fantastic recommendation. It's basically like a slightly more conventionally written Napoli novel, all about #concubine problems (sorry, I know no one but me actually finds that joke funny).

Elen is a young woman in medieval Wales whose family home was sacked by a war band a few years before the time of the novel. She was raped, and her sisters killed; she herself has survived by convincing the leader of the war band that she has the blessing of a saint, and that keeping her close will earn him that saint's favor. The book follows Elen's efforts to make sense of her experiences and choices, especially as she sees another woman experiencing a similar fate. It's an empathetic, thoughtful, and ultimately quite gentle book, even as it deals with trauma with honesty and clarity. I liked it a great deal, and found it to be a very meaningful depiction of the struggle to find choices within captivity.

- Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half - estranged Black twin sisters follow different paths, with one of them choosing to pass as white and the other returning to the community in which they grew up. This is not quite just "Nella Larsen's Passing without the homoeroticism" because it's a generational novel, following the two sisters' daughters as well. It had some interesting things to say about race and identity, but each of the characters is too flat for the whole to hold together as a novel, and it lacks the caustic sharpness that makes Passing so memorable. A lot of the themes also hinge on a really facile analogy between passing in a racial sense and what passing means for trans people, which I thought was insufficiently thought-through and so landed rather sourly.

- Pam C. Zhang, How Much of These Hills Is Gold - the orphaned daughters (well, it's not quite clear how one of them identifies gender-wise) of a Chinese gold prospector roam through the western U.S. This was stylistically quite interesting, but had some significant structural problems. It was also extremely bleak, but because of the structural problems it was hard to sink into that experientially and let myself react to the bleakness in the way that the narrative should have warranted. It's a debut novel; I'll definitely read more by Zhang, as the things I felt didn't work could easily be first novel issues.

- Laurel Flores Fantauzzo, My Heart Underwater - YA; Cori, a first generation Filipino-American girl is sent to stay with relatives in the Philippines after her relationship with her high school history teacher is discovered. I liked this, though I don't think it totally worked. The book is trying to walk a delicate line depicting Cori's relationship with her teacher, showing the naturalness of her crush and lack of outlets as a young lesbian, while also making it clear that her teacher's reciprocation was unacceptable. I think in general Fantauzzo does this pretty well; there are some conversations late in the book between Cori and her peers that fall just on the right side of preachy in a way that works, but there's something that feels overly sanitized about the whole thing, even as I largely appreciate the relationships between Cori and her relatives, which were believably warm and nuanced.

I see that some readers take issue with Fantauzzo's representation of the Philippines, which they found stereotyped and offensive, but I don't have enough context to assess this. This is the second YA book I've read in the past few months which involved a teenager learning things about themselves through visiting family in the Philippines, which does feel oddly specific in terms of my reading habits.

- C. L. Polk, The Midnight Bargain - fantasy of manners; a young sorceress tries to find a way to escape marriage in a version of Georgian England in which women are cut off from their magic as a condition of marriage. I felt this worked in a way that most fantasy of manners doesn't, which I am still pondering; this felt like it successfully indulged the longing for "period details + magic" which fuels most readers' interest in fantasies of manners, while not turning it all into fluff or erasing everything that was actually oppressive about the eras in question. It also had a rather pleasant romance plot line while gave the heroine's dilemmas some actual teeth. Not life-changing, but quite pleasant.

- Heather O'Neil, When We Lost Our Heads - okay. So this was a retelling of some of the events of the French Revolution but reset in 19th century Canada amongst a bunch of psychosexually entangled young women? It was really, really weird. Interesting, but weird. I don't know what O'Neil's point was, and I don't know whether or not I can recommend it.

[capri-ramblings]

Okay so, I'm sure it's been kinda obvious I've been down with writer's block due to the lack of actual content on my blog recently, but somehow while scrolling through Tumblr I came upon @tsuisute 's art of Lilia wearing a rather risque bat lingerie and somehow something in my self-doubting brain clicked and I came up with this short fic. It starts off pretty angsty and I'm not sure when part two is going to come out but basically it's Lilia coping with his young s/o going through a really low point in their lives but yeah, I'm sorry if this turned out kinda flat cause my writing gears are still pretty rustic but I couldn't get it out of my head until I started writing it down. So, hopefully it's good enough! 💖💖

Safe and Sound

Summary: A slight rise in detachment and tension has been visible in you lately and being the ever observant Fae he is,Lilia has a hunch it has to do with your work as a medical mage working in devastating war fractions. He tries to reach out to you, but you keep your distance. At the end of it all, will this cause a bigger gap in your relationship or will it bring the two of you closer?

Part One: To push away one's heart.

The door to the age old manor, closed heavily behind you. The after echo of your footsteps shuffling inside softly whispering into the ancestral walls.

It was odd to have come home to such a quiet place after staying a whole day at a warring border. You felt out of place,detached even. As if this house you grew up in felt horribly unfamiliar. Sometimes it scared you, and sometimes it made you sad. Either way, you tended to avoid anyone in the household from interacting with you after your working hours.

Well,you tried your best to avoid everyone at least. Lilia would always be an exception, and not because you didn't have the heart to ignore him but instead you couldn't ignore him. He'd flock right over to you the moment he'd know you were home and then anything you said to make him leave failed.

He'd always had a mind of his own after all. Things people said went through his head but it didn't necessarily mean he'd take them into consideration. It all came down to the fact that Lilia was always the one with wisdom and truth, he's lived long enough to write books on it, so maybe in a way him interrupting your Isolation was a good omen in disguise, but still, it had you gritting your teeth each time he came up to pull you in an embrace or pat your head.

Today seemed to be no different, as you made your way to the staircase and saw Lilia waiting at the top of it with his usual beaming grin.

You didn't want to meet his gaze then. Something inside of you churned and boiled at seeing someone be so comfortable and gleeful.

"Welcome back,little lantern!" Lilia greeted,his deep red eyes sharing the smile he wore on his lips.

You felt your brows furrowed, but answered him with a slight nod. "Where's Silver and Malleus?", you asked as your bristled pass him at the top stairs and headed for the hallways that lead to the rows of bedrooms. Lilia followed behind you.

"They've gone off, somewhere,well, Malleus went off somewhere then Silver went to go look for him"

"Sebek?", You glanced over your shoulder. Lilia lent a smile your way.

"Training, as always. He wanted to tag along with Silver, but he has a competition later this month, Silver told him to stay and practice"

You let out a small hum, your pace absent as you walked right pass your bedroom door and Lilia had to tell you you had missed it. And as he went to push open your door, your limbs felt forlorn and worn out. There was such a strong urge to simply just fall flat onto your bedroom floor and pass out, but Lilia kept his careful gaze on you and ushered you inside the room, with your bag already in his grip.

Years living with him, and you still couldn't fathom how he did certain things without being noticed.

"A whole day and you've already forgotten where you sleep. Tsk,tsk,tsk...my little lantern has lost their touch of home"

With your back to him as you took off your jacket, Lilia came and wrapped his arms around your waist,the sudden warmth of his body pressing up against you causing you to go stiff.

"Lilia–"

"You should stay home for the week". He murmured,soft and low it sounded almost as if he was pleading.

You placed your hands over his on your waist.

"I can't. They're already short handed over at the border, and even if I am just a medic, it'd be too chaotic to just leave them like that"

"You need your rest, lantern"

"Then leave me alone."

The words left you bitter and taut. A string of unsaid wounds lingering at the back of each enunciation you gritted your teeth on. Your hands clenched over his and the way your chest heaved gave the impression that you could hardly take in another breath.

Lilia released you, and you walked over to your desk and sat down. Your head hurt, and your heart didn't seem to know why it was aching.

"I just need to be alone is all. I don't need you to dote over me,Lilia,I just..."

What did you want? Peace maybe. After seeing all that bloodshed in a single land while its people dropped dead like flies, two years working as a medical mage felt like an eternity of attempting to save people who had half of their bodies blown off as they cried and begged and sputtered out blood.

You wished you'd gone blind, but then again the screaming would have haunted you all the same.

Warring fractions were just a few in the Fae Kingdom, mostly because the lands and people involved in it would've died out before help could even reach them, but still, those that remained became cursed and bloody. A sight you wished you could burn out from your very thoughts.

You never had talent like Silver or Sebek, let alone Malleus himself, but Lilia said you always had a knack for healing, always being the caretaker even amongst your peers. Thus, you dedicated yourself to the one thing you were good at and became an active medical mage. From in-house check ups to risking your neck at war borders, you did what you could and suffered from what you couldn't.

You wanted to save everyone on the field, dying or not,but too many times you saw that hope of yours crushed right before your eyes, and it took its toll on you. At night, you hear the warning sirens and in the morning when you wake up, you dreaded to see the smiling faces of your companions, because you've started to wonder if by horrible fate itself, they laid dying in front of you, could you actually help them?

Vehemently, you pushed back the cry burning in your throat and shut your eyes tight.

'Forget it' . You told yourself. 'You don't have to remember. Just forget.'

It hurt for Lilia to watch you then. Something other than paternal grief overwhelming him. He'd known you've been dragging your own spirit down for a while now, but you were so adamant on avoiding the topic, he hesitated on confronting you about it. After all, it was your pain, your own sorrows, who was he to demand you to show him the scars and wounds you hid away?

He wanted to help you, to do anything he could to soothe your ache. But he couldn't do a single thing if you wouldn't let him.

"I'll leave you be then" Lilia said,soft and endearing, almost as if he was cooing to a child. "Rest well,my little lantern"

[plasticnightmaredoll]

(art commission by the lovely and talented @curious-menace)

It is a time where I would like to see what my followers think about various concepts I have in mind pertaining to alternate versions of one my fics. It may take some time to write out any alternate versions since I've been busy and stressed out so much lately, but I am very curious as to what others would find intriguing to read.

But first, some backstory so be patient. We'll get to the voting at the end of this post.

I've been having a lot of bad days lately, and my mood has plummeted to a major low. This includes my self-esteem, which has always been in the dumps but is now basically a dumpster fire.

However, I don't want to be entirely cruel to myself. I deserve some sort of happiness, some sort of reprieve, and writing can be a good coping mechanism. I put a lot of my own thoughts, emotions, struggles, opinions, etc. into my works, as they serve as a way for me to get things off my chest. Sometimes, it's just cute and funny stuff, other times angsty but eventually fluffy stuff, and other times it's quite depressing and dark.

One fic, in particular, stands out, and that is the Mortal Kombat/Batman Arkhamverse crossover, "Volunteer," (trigger warnings: mentions psychological torture and suicide...more about this fic in a bit for those who would rather not read it because of those triggers) which features Arkham Knight Edward Nigma and Jonathan Crane, as well as a lady friend for Edward named Sara. It also features Erron Black and Cassie Cage from Mortal Kombat (Cassie is only mentioned in the story a few times).

If you read the blog intro/self-introduction post pinned at the top of my Tumblr, you know very well how I feel about Cassie Cage (particularly in MK11) and the Erron Black x Cassie Cage (BlackCage) pairing. Those negative feelings are mostly due to a very bad experience with a pushy BlackCage fan who just wouldn't relent one bit on their stance and it was emotionally and mentally draining to try and talk to them, including providing counter-arguments.

I've come up with alternate versions for "Volunteer" recently due to the spike in stress, depression, anxiety, and insecurities I've been dealing with as of late. This is where my followers come in!

I would like people to vote on which alternate take on "Volunteer" they would be interested in reading. Now, I can't guarantee when I'd get to it because, as I mentioned already, I've got a lot going on. However, I really want to try and write at least one alternate version of that fic, just to get some insecurities and negative thoughts off my chest.

Now, for those who are wary of reading "Volunteer" because of the trigger warnings, here's my advice: Just read the first chapter, if you want to. Chapter 2 deals directly with the sensitive subject matter, although, you can probably guess what happens anyway just by reading Chapter 1 and if you know anything about Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow...well, he likes to mess with people...mentally. To put it very mildly.

Now it's time for the voting. I have three different scenarios I've come up with that are variations/alternate versions of the current "Volunteer" fic's concept/storyline. I'd like followers to select 1 (one) alternate telling of the fic. I will open anonymous asks again, so if you are shy or just want your vote to remain a secret for some other reason, then that's fine by me. Otherwise, you can reply to this post with your choice.

Edit: if you are turned off by the idea of a Mortal Kombat/Batman Arkhamverse crossover, I get it. I don't read crossover fics myself, and that's usually because the crossovers either make no sense or do make sense but the ideas are poorly executed.

This crossover I'm talking about, though, isn't a full-on crossover of MK and Batman. There's no world-building, no larger plot, and no other characters in MK even appear or are mentioned except Erron Black and Cassie Cage.

If anything, it's more of a Batman Arkhamverse standard AU with Riddler and a female oc, and Erron and Cassie are the only concrete elements of MK brought in. I mean, yes, the other MK characters exist, I guess, but they have no purpose in this crossover I've written, and won't make any appearances.

So, if you had any concerns about the crossover aspect, I hope this clears things up

Choices below the cut!

A) "Don't You Wish"

This version is inspired by a song from Pink, called, "There You Go." In this alternate telling, Erron manages to survive Scarecrow's fear toxin, and escape (most likely because Erron is out of his mind and panicking, thus not a threat, and he has no one to help him, so Scarecrow doesn't give a damn what happens to the dude). The first thing Erron does is go to Sara's place, having already broken up with Cassie after realizing dating her was a mistake, and Sara means more to him than he thought.

Well, it's been several months since Sara basically pushed Erron out of her life for his poor choice in women, and (Arkham Knight) Edward Nigma has proven to be a much better (and, wiser and more sensible -- yes, I know, but he's not a skirt chaser, Guys) friend to Sara. While Erron ran off with a blonde selfie princess, Edward offered genuine comfort and companionship, and now Sara has been in the process of moving on from Erron even further.

Sara humors Erron and lets him tell her -- while sounding terrified, confused, and conflicted beyond belief thanks to the fear toxin -- what happened to him. Now, Sara doesn't know Edward asked Scarecrow to take care of Erron as a means of getting revenge for her. Doesn't matter anyway. She's unsympathetic towards Erron's plight, feeling as if he didn't even give her a chance to confess her feelings towards him, nor did he even seem to notice how she felt; it was like he was too busy with thinking with his privates to realize he had someone in front of him who would have treated him better.

Sara tells Erron -- in a flat, disinterested tone -- that his situation is tragic and all but wtf is she supposed to do? Why not go to his dumb blonde gf? Oh, they broke up? Well, how predictable. And Crane is also a (sort of) friend to Sara, which shocks Erron and leaves him feeling worse than before.

Sara sends Erron on his way, and he wanders off in a daze, unsure of what to do with his life now.

Sara and Edward meet the next day, and they have a pleasant time, obviously moving towards becoming a couple. She chooses not to mention Erron as she is completely severing the cowboy from her life.

B) "I Don't Even Miss You"

This alternate telling is similar to the previous one, but this time it's inspired by a Miley Cyrus song, "WTF Do I Know" (Hey, her Plastic Hearts album is actually fantastic!), and Edward is with Sara when Erron arrives at her place in a distressed state. At first, Sara deals with Erron in the hall of her apartment building, unsympathetic to his plight and basically telling him, "I told you so," and "too bad." Erron is getting more and more upset, even angry at Sara's callous tone, and starts to raise his voice, demanding to know why she is being so cold at a time like this?

Edward overhears Erron raising his voice to Sara, giving her a difficult time, and he gets pissed. Edward steps out into the hall and not only mocks Erron in various ways, but demands that he leave immediately, or what Scarecrow did will seem like a trip to Disney Land. Erron has caused Sara -- who is currently moving on and growing closer to Edward -- enough problems and heartache.

Edward reveals he set up Erron, and while Sara is stunned to find this out, she handles it better than expected. Edward said it was his way of getting revenge for her, and he'd do it again if need be. Erron is sent away feeling so much worse, feeling lost, hopeless, and betrayed.

Sara and Edward talk and she admits she's upset that he did something like this without speaking about it to her first. However, he explains that he genuinely did it for her and he doesn't want her to feel pain at the hands of some "idiotic cowman," who doesn't consider the feelings of others and who behaves like a greedy, violent Neanderthal. (And yes, Edward does care for Sara, and he didn't send Scarecrow after Erron out of jealousy -- maybe a little jealousy but it was mostly rage over Erron causing Sara so much emotional pain)

Sara means more to Edward than he can express, and he may not be the best when it comes to emotions, but he does care about her and wants her to be safe.

Sara forgives Edward, understanding that, through his heartfelt but very nervous and shy confession that he is sincere about his feelings for her, and they make amends. She of course tells him to never do something so extreme without consulting her first, though, because what happened to Erron -- while she doesn't care what happens to him in the slightest -- was a bit too much.

C) "Listen When the Devil's Calling"

Another title inspired by a Miley Cyrus song, "Night Crawling," and this alternate telling involves Telltale Riddler and no Scarecrow. Almost a year has passed since Erron went with Cassie and Sara, out of bitterness and heartache, refused to speak or see him. This didn't sit well with him as she was his only friend, and his relationship with Cassie dies within a few months.

He goes looking for Sara, realizing she has moved out of her apartment. It doesn't take him long to find out where she is, and she's with The Riddler, a notorious criminal genius and one of Gotham's elite villains. Erron is worried for Sara and seeks her out.

Turns out, Sara's just fine. This isn't one of those scenarios where the girl is with a guy who just using her and taking advantage of her vulnerability. No, Edward does actually love her and takes good care of her. He finds people like reckless, selfish, and ignorant people like Erron to be a disgrace but also amusing because of how pathetically primitive they are.

Edward also doesn't appreciate how Erron pushed aside a good thing in Sara to pursue a girl who is a social media brat and has more selfies on her phone than brain cells in her, well, brain. It defies all logic to Edward, but he's also not surprised because of how much of a disappointment Erron is as a human being (hey, this is Riddler we're talking about, and he's not one to be sweet and gentle to those he can't stand). Edward doesn't say these things out loud, though, as it's a bit too vulnerable and personal for him to do such a thing with someone he doesn't know or trust.

Sara is upset that Erron has resurfaced and she remembers how heartbroken she was when he went after Cassie Cage. She wants Erron to leave her alone like she asked, so she can move on. She can't trust him anymore, because he's just a skirt chaser in her eyes.

Erron tries to plead his case, tries to apologize to Sara, and expresses how he really feels, but this just distresses her further. Edward steps in and tells Erron he's done enough to Sara, she clearly doesn't want to see him, and he needs to take his leave.

This isn't a request.

Edward pulls Erron aside, telling the cowboy that the only reason he's going to walk away from this alive is that Sara hasn't asked for him to be killed. Should she tell Edward to take care of Erron, well, you all know what Telltale Riddler is like.

And those are the three variations on "Volunteer."

If you could be so kind as to:

leave a comment with your choice or

send an ask (even an anon ask) with your choice or

suggest your take on this story.

I'd appreciate it immensely!

Thank you all so much for supporting me and my writing and being patient with my sluggish publishing schedule!

[red-dia]

hi! i've always loved your hnk panel redraws and recently i've been so inspired by them that i've tried my hand at coloring some panels too! if you don't mind me asking, do you have any tips?

oh i certainly do! some of these are a bit generic/art related but they’re definitely useful in this case too. I’m adding a read more because unfortunately it got a bit long but here you go:

1) Get to know your tools!

Since you weren’t very specific, I’ll assume you aren’t too familiar with art softwares (and if you are, you can just skip that part it’s not That deep). I’ll start with the basics; I know this is obvious, but please bear with me, because understanding how your program works WILL make you a lot more efficient.Here are quick descriptions of some features I think are very useful - I use Clip Studio Paint, but I believe most programs have equivalents. If you don’t know them, please experiment with them, they’ll come in handy!

- Locking transparency :

Locking the transparency of a layer means only the parts where something is already drawn can be modified. Basically, you can recolour something that already exists in a rather precise way.

This is very useful for gradients, which I’ll talk about a bit later.

- Clipping layers :

This gives the same result as locking a layer then drawing over it, but the difference is that you use more than 1 layer ; one as the bottom layer, defining the part of the canvas you can draw on, and the others, clipped on top, where you’ll draw. This can be more practical than locking transparency, because if you have a lot of details to add, doing everything on a single layer may make things more difficult.

I use this a lot when I shade, but just like gradients, I’ll bring that up later.

- Layer settings :

These options change the way the colours on a layer blend with the colours below. As an example, addglow is pretty good for colouring very bright light sources or for adding highlights on gems  :

Basically, using those isn’t a necessity, but they’re still pretty useful so I’d recommend experimenting with them whenever you feel like it!

- Magic Wand : 

Not the most complicated to use, but damn it’s really useful. It allows you to make selections based on the colours you’re targeting, so basically, if you need to colour an entire area a certain colour, you can just select it from the original panel, go on the layer where you’re colouring, and colour nothing but the part you selected. That’s about it!

There are lots of others, but these are the main ones you need to know about when you’re getting started. 

2) Colouring stuff

This is where it gets interesting! I guess! I’m not too good at just coming up with these kind of tips, so I’ll illustrate with some colouring, hopefully it’ll help you out?

I usually colour in 5 parts : 1) Preparing the panel(s), 2) Applying flat colours, 3) Adding gradients, 4) Adding shading, 5) Finalising with details.

I always prepare pages in the same way: first, I use the magic wand to select everything i do NOT want to colour ; the frames around the panels, the speech bubbles, the sfx, etc. Once they’re selected, I copy them, and paste them on a new layer. Then, I select the original layer, and turn it transparent so I can colour below while still keeping the lines. To do that, I go in Menu > Edit > Change brightness to opacity (in CSP at least, it depends on your program tho but most of them support this, I think!).

I end up with something like this : 

Two layers, one on the bottom with the semi-transparent page, and another on top, with everything that I don’t plan on touching. On the page on the right, you can get an idea of what it looks like when you add a layer below these 2 and draw on it.

Now that I’m done with the panel, I can start adding some (flat) colours. 

I think it’s a good idea to start with the background, because it’ll help you figure out the feeling you want to give the panel.

The airbrush is a pretty good tool for gradients btw, just make sure you use a brush that is big enough so the transition in colours looks natural.

Next, I add a new layer, and colour the shape of the characters (and here the vessel as well), so it stands out from the background. It’ll make colouring less complicated, since the lines will be clearer.

As you can see, I was kind of confident, so I directly added a gradient. The bottom of the panel is a bit “darker”, because I wanted the main light source to be the reflect on Phos’….. head thing?

Here’s something kind of important about your choice of colours : if you’re colouring an area that is already shaded in the original panel, I would recommend taking a colour that is more saturated than it should, or else the colour may end up looking dull because the original shading will make it darker.

Next, I do more flat colours. Nothing too fancy, and pretty much everything is on different layers. The clothes are left uncoloured because the background colour already fits, so it’s okay honestly

Then, I added some gradients using clip layers :

As a reference, I used some overlay layers for Dia’s hair, and some addglow layers for Phos’ alloy.

I mean it when I say gradients are important! They make your colouring feel more complete even when they’re barely visible. quickly coloured bortz for reference, assuming tumblr won’t compress the colours too much:

the bastard on the left has nothing but flat colours. They’re nice, but when you’ll have shaded everything, chances are it’ll look kind of …. i dunno, like something is missing? So yeah, gradients : good, though i would recommend you keep them in the same tone as the base colour. I’ll talk about this a bit more later if i don’t forget.

Ok! next: 

I felt like golden colours weren’t quite fitting the mood, so i added a layer with blue on top of it to make it colder. It’s at 40% transparency, so you can still see the colours behind well enough. Some parts were slightly erased because i liked the idea of these parts being lighter (you can see it a little bit around phos’ neck, or above dia’s knees : these parts are yellower than the rest of the pic)

I added some shading! Nothing too fancy. also not to sound like some gradient-freak but you can add some of those in shading as well, it’s usually a nice touch.

After than, I added some lightings, which are on a layer clipped on the original manga panel (so basically only the black parts of the original image changed colours, and the colouring work I did on the layers below wasn’t really affected, if that makes sense?)

The red lighting is the obvious one (it’s an airbrush, and i used an eraser to clear the part near Phos’ head so it looks like it’s coming from above/behind them and not from themself). 

There is another lighting at the bottom, which is grey/blueish, to contrast with the warm colours on the top of the pic. it also kind of looks like smoke but yeah

Now the panel is mostly done, and I’m starting the “details” part.

Something I find really bothersome in the manga is the *original* shading : while it’s always really good, colouring under it will leave some grid of pixels on top of your colours, so to counter that i just colour on top of the grid by colour picking and painting on a layer above the manga layer.

It’s a bit tedious but it has a texture that makes it look like a painting. The downside is that the colours can be altered since you’re colourpicking from something with an irregular pattern, but it can end up making your panel look less boring, honestly, it just depends on what you’re aiming for!

I end up with something like that : 

And then it’s just. Whatever man. I added a black border and some highlights, sparkles, etc, it’s the kind of things you do when you’re basically done. 

For the technical aspect, I’m not sure I have a lot more to add. If you want some advices for picking colours, tho…

3) General colour stuff :

These are just recommendations! Licherally these are mental notes i came up with ever since i’ve started colouring, so they’re kind of personal and if you don’t follow them you’ll be fine, i suppose. But so far they’ve been useful to me so consider them whenever you’ll be colouring something:

- Do not use pure white! Unless it’s for something CLEARLY meant to stand out, such as the frame of your pages, a speech bubble, sparkles, or a light source/something very shiny. If you’re just colouring something that is not meant to draw attention, use some other shade of white, but not the  #ffffff one if you see what i mean?

- Same about pure black, to be honest. 

The shades circled in red tend to look “emptier” than the ones circled in green (here the hue of the colour is yellow but it works with most colours). It doesn’t mean you can’t use it, just, use it sparingly or it may make things look dull I think? I would recommend trying a few shades before taking a decision.

- Sometimes adding highlights where the shading starts can make the transition look smoother: 

- Even if a panel is already shaded in the original page, I would recommend shading it again, because the manga shading is a black shading and shading a coloured drawing with black usually doesn’t look that good. (hence why i said something about using saturated colours in shading earlier).

- Even if a panel isn’t shaded in the original page, consider shading it anyways, even if it’s just a very light shading. It’s worth it :o)

I’m running out of things to say oh well

[radicalposture]

Hey, so were you diagnosed with autism/adhd as an adult? If you don't mind me asking, was that difficult to achieve? I'm 25, and I've often thought I might have adhd, but I've held off on looking into it because I hear it's extremely difficult and expensive to get it tested and diagnosed as an adult.

yes I only got diagnosed last october, I was 25 then too! it was kind of a weird journey for me, all of my siblings and my dad got diagnosed with autism or adhd one after the other and I was still saying “but I can’t really be autistic/adhd” right up until I actually got diagnosed lol. but since then my whole life suddenly makes sense for the first time and I really think things are gonna be ok! this applies to autism/adhd/other neurodiverse stuff but autism and adhd is what I know, but I hope it applies broadly as well

so unfortunately yes, it can be pretty expensive to get through the whole process. depends on where you live of course, I live in Ireland so even though we do have public healthcare I would probably have been on a waiting list for upwards of two years to see a terrible psychologist who didn’t know anything about adhd/autism so I went to a private psychologist. I already knew her pretty well bc my siblings had been to her and I knew she knew what she was talking about and I felt comfortable with her. seeing her cost me around €900 which is definitely a lot, different psychologists have different rates but the price can go up depending on what tests u get done. the more tests you do the more expensive it will be as a general rule (at the same time I saw a different psychologist who had a lower flat rate so idk what the “rules” are about this tbh) I got a standard assessment as well as autism and adhd tests which is why it was so expensive. it used up pretty much all my savings lmao but after getting a diagnosis I was able to apply for disability allowance (which was a hellish process) and I got rejected and had to appeal the decision but I got it in the end, which is fortunate bc I quit my job lol.

recently I wanted to look into medication so I had to go to a psychiatrist because you can’t get a prescription for stimulant medication from a gp in most countries I think? BUT he’d only see me if I got rediagnosed by his psychologist, so that was another €300 for each of them. I did get prescribed ritalin in the end but I’ll have to get the prescription refilled a few times a year bc it’s a restricted medication, which will mean paying €100 ish for each time I do. fortunately I don’t actually have to pay for the medication itself bc I have a medical card.

so yes, it can be expensive! all told it’s cost me almost €2000 to get it all sorted and will keep costing me maybe €300 a year from now on, so it’s definitely something you have to budget for. especially depending on where you live, I imagine things are v different from country to country. also I’m very fortunate bc I still live with my family so I’m free of some financial pressure and I’d been saving for it for a while but I know how hard it is to countenance paying out that kind of money, and wondering whether it’s worth it.

as to whether it’s difficult to achieve I think you’ve got to break it down because official diagnosis is only part of it. so if you think you do have ADHD I’d look at it from a couple of different angles:

1. self acceptance/understanding is absolutely the most important thing. I know people who’ve never been to a psych who know they’re autistic/adhd and really flourish, I also know people who have official diagnoses but who won’t accept it themselves and reject help/support and they’re making things so hard for themselves. so the most important thing is to educate yourself about what adhd means and, more importantly, what it means for you. everyone’s brain is different and understanding exactly how your brain works and why you think/behave the way you do is the most important thing you can do. there are a lot of resources out there, especially online, - I’ll put a link to a google drive of books and things I have at the bottom - and it can be good to connect with others online as well. having people who Get It and can help you is really paramount, I know often our irl families/friends can sometimes let us down so sometimes the only support you can get is from following ppl on twitter or something. the adhd subreddit is weirdly helpful and supportive, it’s great to be able to throw out a question like “I think like this am I insane y/n” and have other people go “nah ur fine” it’s very validating (also validation/external perspectives is super important for adhd bc we can be extremely bad at self assessment). so yes, the most important thing is firstly to know thyself by 1) educating yourself and 2) listening/connecting with others like u.

2. is it important to have an “official” diagnosis? no and yes. obviously you don’t need a diagnosis from a doctor to know what you are, and 70% of the things needed to help you flourish are going to come from your own research and the support systems you make. and if you cant afford or access a psychologist or psychiatrist it doesn’t make it any less real or bar you from educating yourself/accessing resources etc. HOWEVER. if you can get a good diagnosis then I really would go for it, bc: 1) it opens a LOT of doors to official resources, whether that’s access to welfare, supports and accommodations at school or college, medication, etc etc. a lot of the time the supports we need are behind this diagnostic paywall, which sucks but it is what it is :/ so that’s one consideration. 2) it can be really validating and help set your mind at ease about whether you “really” have adhd or if you’re “faking”. like I said I didn’t believe that I was “allowed” to be autistic before I got diagnosed. I also didn’t consider that I might have adhd, I went in thinking I’d just get the autism diagnosis so it wasn’t something I would have found out on my own probably. so it can be good to get an outside opinion, especially as, like I said, we can be really bad at self assessment. 3) it feels good to know you have a piece of paper to throw at rude family members/teachers/doctors who don’t believe it’s real 4) if you can find a good psychiatrist/psychologist it can be such a good thing to have that support and to get genuinely good advice from a professional you trust. doesn’t always happen but if u can find one it’s a godsend

wow this got long. to summarise, if you think you have adhd or anything else I would

research and educate yourself. for adhd probably the best thing to do is read driven to distraction and delivered from distraction, written by two psychiatrists who are adhd themselves. they’re both in this google drive along with loads of other resources I’ve collected, there’s also books about autism as well. as a disclaimer not everything/everyone here has my 100% endorsement some of it is there for academic/historical interest or only parts are helpful but by and large it’s useful. also watch this video and feel Seen

look for a good psychologist/psychiatrist if you’re going for a diagnosis. see if there’s an adhd organisation in your country/area and if they can recommend anyone. a lot of the time you’re better going to a child/educational psychologist who’ll see adult clients as they tend to Get It more. do look for someone who is clear about having experience in adult adhd bc unfortunately even qualified psychologists get a LOT wrong so make sure you get someone who knows what they’re doing before you give them your money

yes it can be really expensive. but if you’re needing to access things like medication or welfare I think it’s well worth the trouble and the money. my sister got diagnosed in her second year of college and was able to save her degree bc of extensions on projects and things like that (I didn’t get diagnosed until after college and spent four years torturing myself I WISH I had known) and it can be something that’s better done sooner rather than later. So if it’s something you can do without putting yourself in financial danger I think it’s good to bite the bullet and go for it. like I used up basically all my savings BUT I now can access disability payments and medication so it was worth it for me. it’ll be different for everyone so use your judgement obviously

anyway hope this helped! let me know if you need anything else! and good luck on your journey

[workersolidarity]

So I started a new job about four or five months ago. For the last two years I've been covered by Medicaid for my Health Insurance.

This has always been a largely fantastic experience. Sign up once, set to automatically re-enroll me every year for five years. Each year I'm asked if I'd like to change my Medicaid provider (there are about six providers of Medicaid in the New Orleans area with options such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Humana, Louisiana Exchange, United Healthcare, etc.)

All my doctor visits, hospital visits, even a gallbladder removal surgery I had in an emergency when it ruptured, was all completely covered at no cost to me.

All my Prescriptions are either $1.00 or completely free. I get free quality Mental Healthcare with unlimited visits, which also includes Addiction Services and complete coverage of the very expensive prescription Suboxone. (I was a Heroin addict for years)

The process involved in receiving these services has always been fairly straightforward. That's not to say finding a specialist of some sort that accepts Medicaid provider insurance isn't frustrating at times, but living in a major city, it's largely not a problem.

I simply go to the website for my provider, look up the specialist and find one that's not poorly rated as close to my home as possible.

Even transportation to and from doctor's appointments are completely covered and relatively easy to arrange.

I call up the transport hotline for my provider, arrange the date and time I have my appointment at, I can even request a preferred company for my ride, and the operator on the other end of the hotline makes the arrangements for me and gives me a confirmation number at the end.

I can even arrange for recurring trips. So going to my Addiction Specialist who's also my Mental Health Provider is very easy despite his office being a twenty minute drive from my home. When my appointment is over, I simply call up either the hotline or the transport company and the come pick me up and take me home.

That's not to say it's some kind of luxurious experience, not at all. It can often be a very frustrating experience, because many of these transportation companies are way overbooked, and so it might take an hour from the time I call after my appointment before I'm picked up to be taken home. And worse still, because I'm often the furthest out from my home, the driver often trust taking care of as many ride drop-offs and pick-ups as humanly possible before actually taking me home. This can result in a return trip time of anywhere from one to even one time FIVE HOURS before I finally made it home!

So trust me when I say there's nothing extravagant about these arrangements whatsoever. They feel rushed and beaurocratic, and that's probably being overly generous.

But besides all that, I can honestly say that over all, having Medicaid Insurance is the best insurance experience I've ever had in my life in the US.

I feel so incredibly lucky that Democratic Governor John Bell Edwards, a typical pro-gun, anti-abortion Conservative Southern Democrat, expanded Medicaid just 6 months before I moved to Louisiana.

And whatever his administration did in rolling out their Medicaid expansion, my experience with Medicaid in Louisiana compared to my experience with Medicaid in New York, has been much better here.

I had more options and actually felt like I had a choice in the priorities of my coverage plan. I know this is largely an illusion, most Medicaid plans are no different in practice from one another, but for what the experience is worth, this was a good one.

I was never made to feel like I was a freeloader or undeserving because I resorted to free Government provided health insurance. I always was always treated well by both the doctor's and medical Institutions side of things, as well as the administrative side.

Amazingly, even when I was working nearly Full-time at a low wage job, I was never kicked off my Medicaid coverage. The Medicaid expansion covers 138% of the poverty level, covering a large chunk of the working poor who would never be able to afford even the bare-bones coverage provided by low-wage employers. Let alone co-pays, deductibles and prescription drug costs.

Unfortunately it would seem that's coming to an end for me. About two months ago, I was promoted into a Management position at my workplace, and am now making considerably more than 138% of the poverty level.

As I am now in Management, and Full-time, my employer does provide some benefits, Health Insurance included.

So last week I received a small package in the mail which included my 2020 insurance options through my employer. Browsing through the pamphlet, I couldn't help but to feel just how valuable a service Medicaid has truly been over the last few years.

Because I have Addiction and Mental Health challenges, plus I'm not in the greatest health and have terrible eyesight, I recognize that the prudent thing for me to do is to purchase one of the higher-end insurance options.

For those who don't know, there are four basic levels of Health Insurance, each represented my a valuable metal; Bronze being the lowest, a bare-bones plan with tiny premiums and huge deductibles, Bronze is pretty much the choice of young adults just recently maturing past the age they can be covered on their parents Health Insurance. This was raised to 26 under the Affordable Care Act's reforms.

The second level of insurance is Silver. Silver is like the average plan. This is what most relatively healthy adults with few if any medical issues, who don't expect to become ill or develop any major Health issues over the coming year, but who still finds it prudent to purchase enough insurance to cover basic expenses should something unexpected occur with their health.

These plans are fairly inexpensive, in fact purchasing this level insurance off the exchanges if your employer doesn't provide coverage, is usually within reach for most Full-time Working Class individuals. Though this might not necessarily be true if one has a growing family. This plan covers roughly 70% of healthcare expenses and discounts most generic drugs.

The next level of insurance is the Gold Plan. With a Gold Plan, your deductible drops dramatically to levels far more easily paid for before your coverage kicks in. But the premiums on Gold level Plans are much higher than either Bronze or Silver. Young families may find this level of coverage difficult to pay for when necessities such as diapers and wipes can cost a family many thousands of dollars per year, per child.

Gold Plans are typically supposed to cover roughly 80% of Healthcare costs, with easily covered co-payments for doctor's appointments, and prescription drug costs well into the affordable range. Though again, affordability in this context is a relative term. A low-income family with two children who still earns a good bit above 138% of the poverty line will almost certainly find the Premiums, Deductibles, and prescription drug costs well out of their budget range. Context is everything.

Lastly at the top of the pack, we have the "Platinum" Level Plan. These plans have a far larger Premium cost. Running upwards of $600 monthly for a single Individual in some cases but with a much more easily attainable Deductible, flat Co-Pays for most doctor visits, and usually with a cap on how much you pay for your Prescription drugs.

These plans are the "best of the best" among American Health Insurance Plans. When purchased through an exchange, many Insurance Providers even offer options that can be taylored to suit your Healthcare needs. And though this sounds all well and good, not many people feel like giving up a third or half their paycheck just for their Health Insurance. Especially when you still somehow have to pay a Deductible, even if that deductible is relatively easy to attain. Platinum Plans are intended to cover 90% of Healthcare costs.

This how the system works in theory. The reality is much less ostentatious.

According to the pamphlet I received in the mail from my employer, my options include a Bronze Plan, Silver Plan and a Platinum Plan, but no Gold Plan.

The Bronze Plan offered through my employer is about what one would expect. For a Premium of less than $100 a month, you receive Healthcare coverage that sounds okay on paper until you see the line about your Deductible and your Maximum Out-Pocket-Cost.

The Deductible for this Bronze Plan will run you a hefty $3'500. This is how much you must contribute annually, co-payments and Premiums not included, before your Health Insurance even kicks in!

As if that's not enough. You would have to contribute an additional $8'150 before your Insurance company finally says enough is enough, and covers the rest of your expenses.

In all honesty, I'm not even sure how this insurance option could even do the bare minimum of helping you sleep better at night. How can anyone sleep at night knowing they're one accident or one germ away from shelling out over $8'000 plus the $3'500 Deductible before their Health Insurance will do much more than sound good on paper. Clearly this isn't the option for me.

Next up is Silver Plan, at a Premium of $175 a month, this Plan sounds like it should be the bare minimum allowed by Law. But if you know anything about the American Healthcare system, you know what makes sense and what is aren't just on different planets, but in completely different Universes!

The Deductible for the Silver Plan offered by my Employer who appreciates us employees so very much (sarcasm obviously), is still a staggering $2'500. Once again, that means you must pay $2'500 on top of your Premiums and Co-Pays before your Insurance Plan even begins covering anything!

This sounds more like a sick joke than a Health Insurance Plan. And with all my Healthcare needs, this just doesn't cut it. I can't afford to wait halfway through the year before my insurance decides to bless me by doing what it's meant to do. I need coverage from day 1.

As I mentioned before, my wonderful beneficent employer doesn't offer a Gold Level Plan among their Benefit options. Nope. It's straight from gutter to roof for them.

And so my last option for my Health Insurance Plan next year is the Platinum Plan. This is the most expensive plan available, at least as far as Premiums go. This bawlers Plan will cost me a heart stopping $325 a month.

And if that's not enough to make me cry, this sure is. Despite the information provided through the Government run exchange at

this plan has no intention of providing a plan without Deductibles. Instead this disgustingly expensive Plan will still cost me another $1'500 before my coverage will even begin.

So aside from the smaller Deductible, what exactly is the benefit of this over-priced Health Insurance Plan? Well, this lovely plan will only make me shell out an additional $3'000 per year on top of all the other expenses before they decide to cover the rest. And in fact, the co-pays, prescription coverage and all other benefits are no different then that of the Silver Plan.

All that cost, few benefits.

Now after all that, go back and re-read my experiences with Medicaid. If America is a country that rewards work, they sure have a funny way of showing it. Seems to me this is one MAJOR step down from my Healthcare Coverage when I was Unemployed or just a minimum wage employee.

Now that I have "pulled myself up by the bootstraps" and "worked hard" to get ahead, I'm being rewarded by having all the extra money I'm earning as a Full time Manager taken away again and then some, just so I can have the shittiest Health Insurance of my life!

This is part and parcel with how the Bourgeoisie in America are absolute experts at dividing the Working Class. As you begin to find success in your life, you're never rewarded for it, of course not. No, in America you are punished for your success.

I don't mean this in the sense that the Ruling Class does when they argue for lower taxes or complain about why it's unfair for us have Single-Payer Healthcare in America.

I mean this specifically within the context of the Working Class. When an extra two hundred dollars a month can mean the difference between living in a decent neighborhood or renting a room in roach infested building on a high crime stretch of road, taking that away from us through our Health Insurance is just sly way for the Bourgeoisie to punish us for being Workers, while lowering their own, but never our, tax burdens, while also breeding resentment between different sub-sections of the Working Class.

This is how the Ruling Class retains their wealth and power without ever having to work very hard to protect their positions within Bourgeois rule.

The divide us along gender, race, sexual orientation, family's country of origin, immigrant vs. non-immigrant, indiginous vs. European decent, higher sub-classes vs. lower sub-classes and so on and so forth.

Doing this guarantees a large sub-section of the Working Class will be too resentful to support programs or reforms such as a Single-Payer Healthcare System, let alone actual Socialized Medicine.

The Bourgeoisie replicate this process of division inside and outside the workplace, in so many subtle ways we rarely stop to think about any of it, and they go on extracting Surplus labor for personal profit while our wages remain flat, our food and healthcare costs skyrocket, and our rents creep up until we can no longer afford to live in our own cities.

This process won't stop. You can't reform this away and any attempt to do so will be met with heavy pushback and cut-throat tactics that often leave us worse off than we were before the attempt at reforms was made.

Even when we have success. It's only a temporary bandaid. One look at the History of the New Deal Reforms and you see how within the first decade, many of the reforms had already been reversed, and within half a century, we're back to square one.

This technique for analyzing the world around us, particularly analyzing the conditions Workers live under is called Historical Materialism, developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid-19th Century.

In the early 20th Century, Vladamir Lenin, Nicolai Bukharin, Joseph Stalin and the rest of the Bolsheviks gave us a road map for a successful theory and set of strategies and tactics for using Marxism to lead a successful Revolution to overthrow the our Bourgeoisie overlords.

We must begin delving back into the theories and praxis offered through Marxism-Leninism so we can finally break the chains of Capitalist Opression and Imperialist wars.

Until we stop putting our faith into the Democratic Party political Opportunists and other representatives of the Bourgeoisie, and begin the real struggle to build up a Vanguard Party to lead a newly Revolutionary Proletariat to revolt against this Oppressive rule by wealthy Overlords who suck the life out of us and our families, and then to add insult to injury they make our necessary healthcare practically unobtainable.

The time for an educated, Revolutionary Working Class is now

Solidarity Comrades

[chooserecovery]

I've been in counseling for several years. The progress in my life has been more than I would have ever imagined. I still shows signs of PTSD but I function without it having a major impact on my daily functioning. Both my depression and anxiety are managed now. Where I am stuck is self-hatred. Any advice on how to truly let go. I recently relapsed with self harm & pills. I don't think it was because depression, it was because I hate myself. I've tried to work on this. I don't know what to do.

If you are still in counseling and you haven’t done so already, then bringing this up with your counselor may be a good idea; self-hatred often seems to come along with PTSD, anxiety, and depression, so there’s a good chance that if your counselor works with people who have those things, they may be able to help you work through this as well.

I know that you’ve said that you have tried to work on the self-hatred, but I don’t know you or what you have done to deal with it, so, because I’m trying to hit the basics, I’ll probably say things that you’ve already tried, but hopefully there will something in here that you haven’t.

Because working takes time and the changes are very gradual, people often don’t notice the progress that they’re making as it’s happening. For some people, it can can help to keep track of little achievements throughout the process. If you’re the type of person who likes gratitude journals, that type of thing can work for this. Or you could just have a notebook or an online writing area or whatever where you just throw in little analyses of things when they happen, such as “tried to contradict a self-loathing thought this afternoon. Felt slightly less stupid this time than it did last week.” It’s just meant to be a place where you can reflect on what you feel, and have a record of your progress that you can look back on when you start feeling discouraged. It can be whatever that looks like to you.

For a lot of people, a large part of self-hatred is the automatic mean thoughts that pop up, either when you feel like you’ve done something wrong or sometimes just because your brain felt like making noise at you. I like to call this jerk-brain. There are a couple of major strategies for dealing with this:

1. Contradict the thought

When self-hating thoughts pop up, argue against them. For example, if you’ve made a small mistake and your brain jumps to saying that you’re a failure or that you always mess things up, point out that it is just one mistake and that it doesn’t reflect on the rest of your life, think of things that you can do well or times you have done that specific task well, if it’s something that you’re new to doing then point out that you’re still learning, etc. 

The self-hatred is almost always some sort of distorted thinking, so trying to fight against it can help you to see the situation and yourself more clearly.

2. Offer yourself understanding

Perhaps the most commonly known strategy. A lot of people who struggle with self-hatred hold themselves to unreasonably high standards, so anything that they do seems wrong. A lot of learning to get past it is to extend to yourself the same feelings that you would probably give to anyone else. 

For example, it’s easy, when you hate yourself, to focus on all of the things that you think are wrong with yourself, or how you could have done better if you just were a little better. But usually, it’s over things that the average person probably wouldn’t be judging someone else for. It can help to imagine someone, such as a close friend, and what you would say to them in the same situation. Again, trying to imagine someone else in the situation can help you to see if you’re just being biased against yourself and treating yourself too harshly. Try to talk to yourself the same way that you would talk to a friend in a similar situation.

3. replace the thought

If your brain likes to throw out the same phrase as a reaction to things, then it can be helpful to pick out a different phrase that you’d rather your brain use and try to switch your brain over to using that one instead. For example, my brain used to habitually throw out “I ruin everything” at the slightest mistake. Not helpful. So I would try to notice when I thought that, and then correct it to “okay, how can I improve this?” which would let me look for a solution rather than just leading me into a guilt spiral. 

It can be hard to jump straight from a jerk-brain thought to what many would consider an obnoxiously positive thought, so it can help to take this in stages, gradually making the new phrase be more useful to you until you are satisfied with it. For example, I replaced “I just want to [insert self destructive thought of choice here]” with “I’m just tired, I want a nap,” which was easier to convince myself of than something more productive; over time I got the nap to be the default, and from there it was easier to hand my brain more and more helpful phrases instead, because they didn’t feel as fake as they did with the original self-hatred phrases. 

4. Reframe the thought

The other suggestions work well for individual actions and situations generally, but this one works more on specific traits that you dislike. It’s also particularly well suited to body-related hatred, but can apply more generally to any stable thing that you dislike. 

Basically, you just try to shift to thinking of the positives of the thing instead of the negatives. For example, if you tend to think of yourself as being too loud, you can try to mentally reframe it as being outspoken or outgoing; try to find a positive spin on whatever it is. 

That’s not to say that you can’t try to change a behavior if you feel that it is really causing problems for you. But even then, the point is not to completely get rid of a trait so much as find a middle ground where you can do things without it interfering with your life.

Also, I’d recommend checking out this page. There are some pretty useful suggestions for dealing with self-hatred.

You can use any or all of the suggestions above, depending on what the situation requires. But all of them tend to rely on you noticing when the jerk-brain thoughts pop into your head. If you already do usually take notice, great, that part is already taken care of. However, if you tend not to notice what you’re thinking until you’re already a good way into the hate-spiral, then it can be hard to interact with the thoughts as they appear. It may help to practice mindfulness techniques. If you want more specific instructions, you can find a lot just by Googling. But more generally, it’s the practice of actively paying attention to your thoughts. The goal isn’t to judge them or to force yourself to not think of things, just to see them and how they’re making you feel. After you’ve got a handle on that, you can intervene as you see fit, by implementing any of the above, redirecting your thoughts, or finding something to distract yourself. 

Self-hating thoughts, like most negative thoughts, also often seem to get worse when someone is stressed or otherwise not feeling as well as they could. So, in order to make them less frequent or at least slightly easier to manage, it can help to just make time for general self-care stuff. Make sure that you have a chance to spend a few minutes doing something that you enjoy every day, and that you’re doing all the basic body-maintenance things like  getting enough sleep if at all possible (if you have a crazy schedule, I know that sometimes it’s not), and getting enough food and water to keep your body running properly. You can also check out this flow-chart if you’re not feeling great and want something to walk you through some options on what to do next.

Mostly, just try to treat yourself like a person and not like a burden. You’re allowed to make mistakes, you’re allowed to take care of yourself, and you’re allowed to say “no, I don’t deserve to be treated this way” even when it’s just your brain saying things at you. It can be hard to try to do that when you don’t like yourself, but, like most things, it tends to get easier the more that you work on it. Some days you’re going to not feel like doing anything about what your’e feeling because you’re too tired or too irritated or just flat-out don’t want to. Everyone has some days like that. But if you can do your best to work against those thoughts whenever you’re able to, then you should be able to make progress, even if it’s just a little bit at a time.

--Luke

[asherlockstudy]

1) Hi, recently I've been reading a lot of posts about how the most important thing for Mofftiss was to be "clever and surprise the audience", sometimes at expense of character developement and plot, and I think this is the reason why they killed off Moriarty so early in the show (unless he's actually alive, as I obviously hope). Moriarty is the main villain in almost every Holmes adaptation, so they wanted to do something different, write a totally new, better villain,

2) which, on a theoretical level, can be a good thing, but in the end they utterly failed. They wrote Moriarty as one of the best and most compelling villain ever, while Eurus, the new, better villain they wanted, is so unconvincing and flat I’m not at all surprised the episode was so strongly disliked by many fans. I think if they didn’t want so much to be cleverer than anyone else, they would’ve realized what a great character Moriarty was3) and they would’ve gone with him as the ultimate villain in the end, instead of writing the least fascinating villain of the series and just putting Moriarty in a flashback as an afterthought. What do you think? 

I mostly agree with both you and all these posts. I think Moftiss dreamed to achieve a paradox: create a version that would offer a brand new, hopefully shocking and unexpected insight in Sherlock Holmes’ character but without alienating their version from the canon to the point of having some people accusing them of taking too many liberties. 

As long as they had the convenience of the open, developing story arc, they were as innovative as possible. Sherlock and John were in love (IMO, dunno if you ship it), Moriarty had a much stronger presence, complex and layered character as well as a completely daring relationship with Sherlock which basically resembled a lover’s jealousy much more than a nemesis, Mrs Hudson was much cooler, Lestrade closer to Sherlock, Mary had an interesting twist as a person of AT LEAST very dubious allegiances etc

But when they had to wrap up the story, they abandoned any innovative thread they once created. Were Sherlock and John in love? Well, who knows, the thing is they remained friends living seperately like in ACDc. What about Mary’s character and motives? Well, who knows, she ended up the good wife who had an undeserved death like in ACDc. What about Moriarty? Why did he do everything? Did he have a much more personal reason? Well, who knows, he died in the middle of the stories but kept haunting Sherlock for a while like in ACDc. Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, Molly - nobody had a fully developed story arc like the previous series suggested because that was the case in ACDc too, let alone that Molly didn’t even exist.Moftiss chose to be truly creative only when it came to an issue Doyle never addressed: how Sherlock Holmes became Sherlock Holmes. There they felt completely free and unafraid to add to the story because they thought nobody could blame them they violated the canon (or created a version worse than the original or many others). So they decided to add as much shock and surprise to their solely own part of the story: Sherlock’s past and Eurus. The problem is that when you abandon, one by one, all your plot threads, and give your everything to a risky idea that has no reference, hint or at least familiarity to the canon and you hope to enthrall the crowds with that shaky idea distributed in ONE SINGLE EPISODE, it’s really unwise to believe you ‘ll actually succeed.  

In short, I think they truly wanted to hint that Moriarty had a very personal problem with Sherlock, that Sherlock and John were in love, that Mary might have been a double agent, that… that… that… But their point was just to hint because they weren’t confident enough to make the subtext text. For everything they would add, it would still always be 1895. Like a loop of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson and Jim Moriarty always having the same fate through time, despite the changes coming with each era. I don’t know, they might even think it’s a good idea. I would perhaps like it too, had it not been so poorly executed in the end. 

While completely afraid to vastly and irreversibly change the canon, they still tried to up their game as much as possible, aware what people wanted. More Johnlock? Have it! More Moriarty despite being dead? Have him! They did an awful lot of fan service. For instance, they kept mentioning Irene Adler for no reason. They kept Molly stuck to her feelings despite previously hinting that she moves on. They brought Moriarty back because they thought his fans just missed the swagger. All this fan service that made the story end up incredibly shallow. 

So, they knew they created a fantastic Moriarty, much better than the original, that’s why they kept mentioning him constantly and bringing him back in any way that seemed possible. But they did not dare or want to actually bring him back and be accused of butchering the canon. They eventually tried to belittle Moriarty for the sake of their own Eurus, by making Eurus smarter, more dangerous, crazier, I don’t fucking know what else. They gave Eurus unrealistic qualities to hopefully beat Moriarty in the fans’ mind. They made them relying on each other mutually so that would keep both the Moriarty fans and everyone expecting something fresh happy. They made Moriarty be in awe of her and partially work with her. But they also gave Moriarty some swagger ( that in fact didn’t feel like him) just so they wouldn’t overdo it. They tried all this in one episode. They tried to surpass with their own one-episode story the hype they had knowilngly created all these years with their not definite yet important improvements on the canon. They tried so desperately to achieve this in such a short time that the result was quaint and delirious. Their Eurus very reasonably failed.

They simply tried to please everyone who appreciated the hype they had created in the middle of the show without altering the ACD canon except in the only way they felt they would not be criticized at all for potentially worsening somebody else’s work: in Sherlock’s past which ACD hadn’t mentioned at all. It’s ironic how that’s why they got the most criticism in the end. 

Anyway, this is the only way I can remotely interpret the reason behind their choices. They wanted to be innovative in the most undaring way possible - that’s not how it works.

Having said all this, MORIARTY LIVES