#we dont talk about my voice

[cinderspots]

PSA for cold people with not enough blankets

I'm real bad at explaining things, just trust the process

[heartorbit]

catch us if you can! ☆

[koyehn]

"we had such hope... you would understand."

[bmpmp3]

sorry to be a bit of a hater but i do wish youtubers weren't so scared of making their videos just like, "reviews", whys everything gotta be a "video essay" all the time. every day my recommendations are filled with 40 minute videos titled "_____: An Underrated Masterpiece" where the first like five minutes are reading the wikipedia definition of "masterpiece" in a somber voice with dramatic themed text on screen. please just tell me how good or bad you think something is and use the rest of the runtime to explain why. you dont need to put on all these airs

[suntails]

I’m going to paint you a picture of modern communication, and how it is fundamentally broken.

Let’s look at one friend. You chat pretty much everyday, and mostly talk to this person on twitter and discord, with occasional tumblr DMs. That’s three places you talk. But that’s actually not true, because you also have each other’s priv twitters and talk there as well. That’s four. Now account for, let’s say, one post reply per account per person, in addition to your DMs. That’s eight. But that’s ALSO not true, because not only do you talk in discord DMs with each other, but you’re in a friend group server as well! And you talk in those channels together! That’s nine.

This is one friend.

Now look around you. How many friends, how many mutuals are you in contact with. A few, a handful, a dozen, more? How many accounts per person do you have, how many places can you send each other posts, devolve into separate topics and conversations? How many people text you as well. Friends, family, coworkers? What do you do day to day around catching up, what IRL commitments will rip you away long enough to let the pile build again?

I can’t do it. I cannot live an actual life in the real world and balance this much interaction, it’s crushing. I reply to a friend’s post because I’m interested in the subject, I want to have a discussion! I WANT to talk about it with them, but I immediately kick myself for adding another conversation to the pile. Day by day, I ignore messages for hours on end and watch mountains pile around me, to reply en masse at the end of the night to let the cycle repeat. I wake up to six discord DMs and as I clear the third, the first replies back again.

We weren’t meant to have thirty simultaneous conversations. We weren’t. And you know in your bones that the number isn’t an exaggeration.

[sieglinde-freud]

they were so insane for this

[13eyond13]

underrated funny thing about lawlight is they never actually did get to confirm that 100% of the time they were basically thinking exactly what the other person thought they were thinking every single time

[drgstore]

someone help please he wont get OUT OF MY HEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[yellowocaballero]

hi! i've been reading some of your older fics and was wondering if there's any merit in watching buffy for the first time in the year 2024

This may not be obvious, but this is actually an extremely complicated and highly subjective question. I'll try to go on for too long.

As background: my mother loved Buffy and its spin-off Angel growing up. It was our Bible (besides the actual Bible). Not kidding, she was on the forums and fan groups and wrote fanfiction for it and everything (These days, she's really into kdramas and Asian dramas, and calls me about how the Thai seem like big fans of gay people). So I'm quite biased.

BTVS is both a product of its times and ahead of its times. It was a show about feminism and the struggle of living in this world as a woman, when very few shows were doing that. It was the first show to have a long-lasting lesbian couple, and the first show to depict a kiss between them. For better or for worse, it was one of the codifiers of broody vampire boyfriend. It was pretty unafraid to be experimental in a lot of what it did. It had incredibly complex and nuanced character work and growth that I still aspire to. Spike's arc is still matched in quality only by Avatar's Zuko. Angel's long term arc, from Buffy to his spin-off series, still makes him one of the most complex characters on TV. It had the most complex depiction of depression on TV at the time and I still think it's one of the best. I think the show had very high highs.

It also had very low lows. Some of the feminism is problematic in retrospect. The sapphic couple has a rather famous element that was severely problematic. There are, overall, some deeply atrocious arcs that I can appreciate objectively but not in practice. Xander: a whole-ass character aged awfully. On a meta level, the workplace conditions were bad (thanks, Whedon.) There are no people of color. The spoiler's sake I won't go into detail on this, but in general the good stuff was so influential and the bad stuff was just awful.

I think these days people tend to brush off the entire thing because it's Whedon. That is more than fair. But I'd also say that Whedon & Buffy is extremely similar to Brian Michael Bendis & Ultimate Spider-Man. Bendis was fantastic at writing sassy, bouncy, permanently stressed-out teens - issue was, he wrote entirely different serious adult characters the way he wrote these sassy teens. Same with Whedon: the annoyingly constant quips are perfect for Buffy, because that's who the characters are. They're awful in Marvel, because Steve Rogers is not Xander. Kinda similarly, Buffy was genuinely feminist for 90s TV - issue is, Whedon has not grown or developed his views, and now his works feel so sexist (oh my fucking god why did you treat Natasha like that). After a certain point it's egotistical: you're writing like that because you're Joss Whedon and it's how you write, not because it's what's best for the characters and story. But it was really important to me to get the character voices right, and it's freaking difficult to endlessly write dialogue that distinct, full of voice, witty, and clever.

I think BTVS & Angel TV's greatest influence on my writing is how intensely character-driven both of those shows were, and how intricate the characters were. What every character did was something they would do, if that made sense. Even the stuff I hated to watch, that made me uncomfortable, was the culmination of so much (usually). I think I also picked up the constant wit and humor lol. On a personal level, the conversations I would have with my mother where she broke down the character motivations and composition of the story was my first exposure to looking at storytelling from an analytical perspective and a framework of critical analysis, which was an approach I carried into the rest of the media I consumed and that was the primary reason I was able to become a decent writer. Thanks, Mom. Have fun with your kdramas.

TL:DR: There is merit, especially if you care about good character work. There are things about it that may make you want to drop it, which is extremely valid. Season 1 is rough but interesting, Season 2 and 5 are the best, Season 3 is pretty good, Season 4 and 7 skippable, and Season 6 is........epic highs, epic lows......

[sonknuxadow]

obsessed with the idea of eggman being a villain but not a bigot. sonic transitions not long after him and eggmans first meeting and sometime during the next adventure eggman is complaining about the little girl who keeps destroying his robots and suddenly sonic appears behind him and goes Actually im a boy now. and eggman so genuinely and sincerely goes Omg im so sorry for misgendering you it wont happen again. and then he pulls out his new hedgehog killing death laser

[anistarrae]

I kinda want to get into digital painting, how do you make your paintings look so good? Do you have any tips?

its really all about practice id say, and understanding shadows and light sources.

my mom has studied art for years, she no longer does it, but she told one of the most important advices when it comes to shading. draw a small ball on where you want the light source to come from, and draw from there. imagine how it will effect every small thing in the drawing, how little or lots of light it will have.

this is something i made while explaining this to someone a few months ago, this is what my mom told me what to do, and i learned a lot about shading from this. studying from real life is also very important, seeing how light interacts with objects, how light is reflected off to other objects, how blurry or sharp the shadow can be. its endless amounts of knowledge when looking at real life subjects.

when rendering, light sources are one of the most important things, learning the fundamentals can help you in the long run. thinking of what you want your shadows to look like too, do you want them soft or sharp, or even a mix of both? finding something right for you is important, and that's why experimentation is key for finding what you're happy with. trying so many different techniques is possible when going into digital art, take things from artists you like, redraw your favorite piece to see how they've made it, try new brushes or programs, its all up to you!

color is important when it comes to rendering, that could be said for any piece. color dictates the feeling of the piece, using many different colors in your shading can make it pop out. going back to experimenting, trying new different colors and palettes is very helpful too! play with saturations, values, try using only one hue. i stick to warms usually, but seeing what else you could be using can be fun too! color is limitless, try all that you can :D

in art, i believe experimentation is one of the most important things, it leads to your growth as an artist. i would be nowhere without it, and i very much encourage anyone to try all they can. digital art is one of the most expansive artforms, you can get almost any look with it, you can do so much with it that makes creativity limitless.

[up-in-flames-writing]

In lieu of Stuff Your Kindle day, can we talk about the issue of how the m/m genre of books, romance or not, is almost entirely dominated by women? Can we talk about how the most recognisable gay couples in media are written by women? Can we talk about how queer men can't even write about ourselves, how we are only allowed to exist when it's from the point of view of a straight woman sexualising us?

Can we talk about that? Or am I going to get called misogynistic for pointing out the disparity between who gets the writing deals, & who gets their books turned into movies, & whose shit gets popular versus whose doesn't? Can we talk about how m/m fiction is only allowed when it appeals to a cishet gaze, or is that too much for tumblr to take?

Can we also talk about how trans queer men are even more hated by publishing? Can we talk about how we get shit from both sides? Can we talk about how books about the experiences of being a queer man, written by queer men, never get the same recognition as books written by women on this subject (barring academia which has its own problems)?

Can we talk about that? Can we?

[the-acid-pear]

I love how Down Bad Dave is for Jack. Like yeah and the sky is blue but like seriously. He's so obsessed w that stupid tangerine my man lost braincells his raging homosexual tendencies did more than any lobotomy could to fry his brain he was so much more smart in the first game but the moment he met Jack bro just Lost it and he didn't even Need to work with him just meeting him and bro was so overwhelmed by emotions it's almost cute if you ignore how violent and self centered this made him. But it's also funny because like he IS a really smart man he's really meticulous and crafty and capable of foresight yet he is so fucking distraught by getting dumped by his Nothing, His Fucking Coworker, Nothing Else that he STORMS THE BUILDING PACKED W ROBOTS CAPABLE OF RECOGNIZING CRIMINALS like my man the same guy who's sloppy but so effective he got away w shit for so long just threw all rational thinking off the window bc he was ooooh so angry and sad!!! It's great. It's so silly. I want to squish him with both my hands so hard.

[fenglianist]

post 3rd ascension fenglian from xie lian's pov is like what if you never forgot your childhood best friend bc he reminds you of home and his laughter makes you nostalgic and every little thing about him is so dear and familiar and nostalgic and years ago when you were both young you broke his heart and he broke yours and you both hurt each other but you forgive him for everything bc you understand that you were both young and human and flawed and didn't make the best decisions and you know better than anyone that he only left bc you drove him away and you hold no hard feelings towards him at all but instead hold so much goodness and care towards him and no matter what happened in the past you both still care so deeply about each other and you are just so happy to be reunited with your childhood best friend again. what then.

[moth-flowers]

moth-flowers #17

[dailykugisaki]

Day 253 | id in alt

A small thang of a girl who really wants to get paid.