#i save a bunch of these for my collages so i figured i might as well share lol

[dykesbites]

IKEA object pngs: plant mister, hanging baskets, hourglass, pomegranate container, rattan basket, watering can, basket, blacked out globe, basket trio

ID in alt text | SUPPORT ME | free to use, like or reblog if you do!

#pngs #carrd packs #transparents #home interior #IKEA #aesthetic png #i save a bunch of these for my collages so i figured i might as well share lol #i guess im a png blog now #i might make a sideblog for it if it becomes a thing

[ryuichirou]

Replies

Short replies! As many as I can write in 30 minutes! Let’s goooooooooo

Anonymous asked:

Deuce should have put a ring on his mom if he didn't want anyone to flirt with her. she's free for picking

Yeah, by the time Deuce figures it out there’s going to be a line of people who want to put a ring on his mom, and I stand in this line too.

Anonymous asked:

Which anime characters do you love drawing the most?

This is such a difficult question to answer, I can’t pick 😭 Pretty much every title that we watch or read or play has a bunch of characters that I adore drawing, but I guess I gravitate towards characters with long hair and unusual hairstyles or outfits?? I also feel the urge to try to draw a character when they are out of my comfort zone, which doesn’t mean that I always do it or good at it, but I always have fun drawing stuff in a different art style (like the guys from Scott Pilgrim),with complicated outfits (like Barok van Zieks) or with mechanic parts (like Ortho!)… but the last one is pretty recent, I just noticed that I kind of enjoy drawing it. I guess I love a challenge? In a way? It’s just more fun that way.

By my comfort type of character and a default option would be a gloomy boy/girl in a hoody, my heart is always smiling whenever I draw this type.

Examples of some of my faves throughout the years (without twst): Levi (SnK), Ainosuke (sk8), Killua (HxH), Shiroba (DMMD), Apollo Justice (AA), Geto (JJK)… this is just a few of them.

I also still think that Prussia from Hetalia is our ultimate boy because I’ve been drawing him for about 15 years now lol

Anonymous asked:

Omg, your boob post,bless u... What would Riddle think of her childhood friend having those honkers though?? (Also, her burying her face in those tits or fondling them with curiosity lol)

Ahh thank you so much, Anon!! <3

I still giggle every time I think about how we ended up with poor Riddle being surrounded by busty girls, I swear it wasn’t intentional. But the more I think about it, the funnier and more Freudian it gets… what an aggressive way to heal mommy issues and an acute deficiency of tight hugs.

To answer your question, I think Riddle was kind of surprised when she saw Trey after being separated because she didn’t think boobs could get that big. Logically yes, it makes sense, but seeing it in person is different. Riddle always does her best to be proper and act like a lady, but I can imagine her eyes sliding down all the time during their first conversation. Trey would absolutely notice…

Riddle is indeed very curious, and it’s pretty obvious, but she would never talk about it or even ask to touch Trey’s boobs, but maybe one day… you know, for science… or Trey is just going to offer it herself lol save that girl, Trey.

Honestly? If Riddle could just bury her face in Trey’s chest for a minute or two, I think a lot of her tantrums would just… not happen. She would be so calm…

Alright, now Trey owes this to humanity.

blackbutlerfandomnerddomain asked:

Why do I deeply headcanon Night Raven Collage have orgies? I kind of blame you

😭Look at us being the worst influence on this fandom LOL

Ironically, I don't think we ever talked about orgies and such?

NRC might have a secret student society for orgies though...

Anonymous asked:

Eric Venue can get it though 🥵

And he did! That’s how we got Vil 🥰

hipsterteller asked:

Have you seen Vil’s father?! And why do I get a feeling you might be putting him and Trein together?

Yes, we have! He looks great, and based on everything we’ve seen and heard so far (as always, we aren’t watching the event just yet), he is everything we wished and expected him to be, so I’m very satisfied hehe.

I don’t know about your feeling though, do you want us to? 👀 Is it because of another certain stylish young man?

We don’t know who we’re going to ship Papa Schoenheit with though, only time will tell…

Anonymous asked:

just wanted to say i absolutely adore your Ortho x Vil stuff!

Thank you so much, Anon!! <3 I am very happy that you love them!

Anonymous asked:

Do ya think Sebek has fantasies ab breeding Malleus

Kind of talked about it here!

But also in general, I feel like Sebek has all kinds of dreams about Malleus, like he wouldn’t dare to actively fantasise about it, but his mind keeps showing him so many naughty scenarios that he finds it very difficult to look at Malleus after that sometimes…

Anonymous asked:

Do you guys ever think about how Floyd would try to breed Riddle?

Because he probably didn't understand how human bodies work at first (was probably taught but got bored listening)

Floyd probably like : Where the baby bump?

Then Riddle would be like : Baby bump? I can't have babies -

*insert small sad Floyd in eel form here*

Awwww, poor eel, he was so sure that he found his mate 😔 Keep trying, buddy, maybe you’ll get him next time. Or the time after that. Basically, just keep mating with him until you change his entire anatomy lol

We haven’t really thought about this specific theme, but we did talk about Floyd being in heat and being all over Riddle, so at least there’s that!

Anonymous asked:

Hello!!  Iirc, you guys don't read the TWST mangas or light novel right?  There's a bit in the new 4-koma manga I'd thought you'd like: Rook, Leona, and Idia have to paint something and then make it move with magic.  Rook paints himself about to shoot an arrow that always aims at Leona.  Then the Rook in the painting comes to life and terrorizes the Savanaclaw students, so Leona smacks Painting!Rook with his canvas where P!Rook decides to stay.  Leona's okay with it cause it means he doesn't have to paint anything.  Idia's just there to judge I guess.

(new head canon, Leona's a pillow princess)

Hi Anon! Yeah, I heard that they’re making a 4-koma manga, and even though we don’t read any additional twst material, I really love that they’re making it! I love 4-komas, they’re silly lol

The one that you described is golden and pretty in-character; god poor Idia who had to witness all that lol I love that just running around and shooting beast boys is pretty much Rook’s entire essence…

It also makes sense that Leona would do something like this omg, paint your own picture you lazy bitch 😭

(also not a headcanon, Anon, this is 100% factual)

Anonymous asked:

I….That anon was….personally offended by a headcanon? I’m so confused…

(related to this reply)

Maybe?? I don’t know, but they weren’t rude about it or anything, so I hope it’s all good.

Anonymous asked:

Jade can gaslight me all he wants…

Don't encourage him, Anon... he is already very ill-behaved.

Anonymous asked:

Jinx from Arcane looks like Idia’s long lost sister.

Don't know much about her other than her design and some bits and pieces of her story, but Idia with two pigtails would look very cute.

#replies

[propertyofkylar]

Now introducing…. Brain rot getting mixed up with rated r brain rot and the difference

Brain rot - the brain rot I am gonna talk about is when a child is exposed to a bunch of different videos usually comprised of singing and dancing mostly the evolved version’s of Elsa gate videos,coco melon is one of them same for peppa pig these videos also feature fetishes like… fart,pregnancy,ect some videos that have gameplay like Minecraft are used there is a YouTuber that I won’t mention so let’s just call em uh… jay. Jay makes Minecraft videos where he has to save his “girlfriend” also makes fun of the lgbtq by using herobrian is it funny? I mean if you think herobrian in a maid outfit calling himself “I am herobrian lgbt” is funny then i can’t blame you the name is stupid and that’s it for that mini lesson

18+ Brain rot - this version of brain rot is kinda hard to explain? But hey thats the point of learning right? I mean you didn’t even ask I just wanted to write this ask and send it to you for fun, anyways 18+ brain rot is where someone sometimes teens or adults watch pornography like the hub this could sometimes get then to become a porn addict and go ruin a child’s life because the stem in their brain shrinks and shrinks until… death? Or just plane out stupidity.

In the game roblox there exists a couple of groups that has a bunch of people/kids who I think got hacked but at the same time I don’t play that game I just saw someone else talk about it “rubinsim” a controversial figure but he is the only person that lets the roblox mods actually do their job? The “kids game” is like filled with inappropriate content THAT IS GETTING SHOWN TO KIDS now where was I? Oh yeah so these groups have accounts that are referencing topics that kids shouldn’t know like bbc not the news channel… and if a child adds one of these people as a friend I wonder what happens…

So an example of a child talking to one of these figures can go like this

> hey wanna have fun?

< sure what game?

> join me and find out

< ok

Now onto the topic there exists games called “condo games” on this platform these games feature animations of sexual content is involved should we worry yeah? Does the creator of the platform even care nope

But that’s the difference between regular brain rot and brain rot that is mostly risking lives of others

And what I can say is… that was not skibidi onto next time my friend if you have a question or problem ask away because I might pop into your inbox and write a collage essay. - 🖥️

i feel very educated now. i think

[master-of-fluff]

How many AUs do you have? (And can you tell what they all are?😅😁)

I have 10 Au's so far so here they are with a bit of info in no particular order

1. kidnapped kai au

ok so in this au kai unlocks his elemental powers before he met Wu causing garmadon to take an interest in him and so kai was the one who was kidnapped instead of nya and nya has to get kai back -she also joins the ninja team from the start and is told about her parents and their powers

I have fanfictuon out about this -just search the kidnapped kai au tag but im taking a break from updating so that I can plan it out more and have an outline

2. is my bnha crossover au

so this morro, garmadon and harumi get reincarnated into the bnha verse

morro becomes the adopted older brother of the main character midoriya

harumi becomes the twin of this crazy rich inventory girl

and garmadon becomes a theripist

they all basically help the main character achieve his end goal of becoming the no.1 hero without a superpower -idk if you watch bnha but basically 80% of the people there have a power called a quirk and the main character is a part of the 20% that don't)

Im also making an outline for this one so I might write it out sometime next Yearo making an outline for this one so I might write it out sometime next Year

3. hybrid smith siblings au

basically ray is a demon and maya is an angel they fell in love and were kicked out of their homes and hurled to earth -they use magic to keep their appearance hidden and nonbody knows

-until kai starts growing wings and horns

-nya grows them too but it starts at a certain age so at the start the focus is mostly on kai

I don't have much for this au besides its polyninja lol

I just think that jay would help with sensory overloads since Kai's senses inhance and also his wings are very sensitive

and zane would help kai with feeling different

and Cole is just the rock that knows what to say to ground him

thats literally all I have for this au

4. polyninja fam au

ok so in this au the ninja -who are all dating- get tired of saving ninja go and quit and run away -taking lloyd with them and adopting him ofc

-they also steal some yesterday's tea and turn lloyd back Into a kid so he can have the life head supposed to

-so first they live in the old lighthouse zanes dad was trapped in since its self sustaining -which is where they find echo who they also adopt

then slowly they each get jobs

-cole becomes a comic book artist/author

-kai and lloyd make video games (they also have cole make comics for said video games

-zane becomes a chef (who donates half his profits to orphanages)

-and jay works for cyrus borg

we also have polyponytail:

-nya and pixal help skylor out at the noodle shop

-they mostly help by making invitations to help with everything

-but if it's real busy they help in the restaurant

dareth and ronin are also dating and pretty much lloyd and echos uncles

-ronin uses them as a distraction to steal stuff though

-dareth is good at making up weird games

-they are good babysitters

-sorta

also brad and gene become good friends with lloyd and echo

5. highschool au -this is also polyninja-

this was made with @/stranger mask @/lloyd-garma-gun and @/superstar-rockin-abs

basically the ninja are in highschool but

pastel goth zane

jock jay

nerd kai

vintage cole

polyponytail met in chess club

polyamory with lloyd gene and brad and they are all cheer leaders

halfway checkpoint

6. nindroid jay au

jay is one of the older prototypes that dr.Julian made and dumped

years later Ed and edna find him and repair him

since his parents are inventors he basically adds a bunch of things to himself -like retractable wings and stuff

Zane and him feel a weird connection but neither of them remember their creator until tick-tock -this is all I have for this au

7. paranormal YouTubers au

this is an au im making for @/wojira and if u want more details u should probably ask her -I'll also tag u in the og post about this au if you ask

basically the ninja are collage sstudents who started a YouTube channel where they invest haunted places as a joke but they become super popular -again more details in the original post if you ask-

8. manipulative morro au

me and @/thebluelittlewitch2-thesequel made this but @/superstar-rockin-abs and @/grembeak gave hs the idea i think

basically lloyd didn't get hit by tomorrows tea so instead of possessing lloyd morro manipulates him into doing things for him by saying that lloyd gone crazy and the only way for 'the voicemail' -aka morro- to go away is for him to do certain things

harumi later teams up with morro for a second try on revenge andalso becomes more of a mother figure to lloyd then a lover -lloyd is a bit younger then her in this au

she uses her powers to start an orphanage but really its a place for her to train and raise a cult of parentless children that they are orphans because of lloyd and that if they follow her they can all have revenge

her code name is changed respectively to 'mother lullaby' and morro's is 'toxic wind'

9. evil ed and edna au

basically Ed and edna are evil assasins/ inventors who become obsessed with making the ultimate weapon

they basically turn jay into a hydra experiment -training him and experimenting on him over and over and over-

but eventually they decide that he is a failed experiment and abandon him -at this point he looks far from human

but kai and nya find him and take him in -he is a year older then nya so nya is ten hes eleven and kai is 13-

at first jay thinks he was kiddnaped but there is no way these kids could have so then he thinks that him being there is another test and he has to figure out what it is but eventually he figures out he was abandoned

he helps the smith siblings by inviting things that help them around the house -and also making toys for nya and kai-

they become a small family

10. thiccjago

just look at the @lord-garmabooty-official blog...that's all you need to know

whew that took way too long but here ya go!!!h

[reasonjeans1]

How the 10 Worst View Private Snapchat Accounts Fails of All Time Could Have Been Prevented

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And lastly, Sometimes, data can acquire corrupted if the transmission is corrupted, e.g. if you are switching on top of from a 4G network to a 3G or 2G, the data session might get interrupted and the video cant work. With Best Wishes..!! Great Day..!! Login pronouncement beefs up the auspices of your account by adding an additional mass of security to back up prevent unauthorized account access. This just means that whenever you want to sign in to your Snapchat account from any device, youll dependence to enter both your password and a encouragement code that will automatically be sent to your phone past you try to log in. To enable login confirmation on Snapchat, conveniently navigate to the camera tab, tap the tiny ghost icon in the summit right of the screen, tap the gear icon in top right and see for the Login encouragement settings option. Snapchat will mosey you through the process of getting it all set up. 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Snapchat recently introduced a new feature called fast Add, which you can look displayed at the bottom of your chat list and your stories tab. It includes a quick list of suggested users to build up based upon mutual friendships. So if you have your fast add setting enabled, youll perform happening in the friends of your links quick be credited with sections. If youd pick not to work taking place there, you can turn this character off by tapping the ghost icon > gear icon and selecting see Me in quick Addto slant it off. Its not peculiar to experience random users count you to their friend list, despite not knowing them at every or having no clue how they found your username. And even if you followed every of the above tips to ensure that isolated your contacts can read you and see your stories, you can still remove (or block) users who try to increase you on Snapchat. To do this, tap the ghost icon and next tap the further Me unconventional beneath your snapcode. 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Anyone who takes a screenshot of your snaps could state it anywhere online or appear in it to anyone they want. while its typically harmless to snap and look screenshot notifications from enormously close associates and relatives you trust, it never hurts to be other enliven of what youre sending them, just in case. Snapchat will inform you within the app itself if someone takes a screenshot, but you can as well as get them as instant phone notifications by keeping Snapchat notifications enabled within the main settings of your device. Many Snapchat users will insinuation their username in a publicize on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or supplementary area online to put up to others to increase them as a friend. This is fine if you have every of the above privacy settings configured to your liking (such as who can way in you) and are happy to have lots of people viewing your snaps, but not if you desire to save your Snapchat objection and interaction more intimate. In auxiliary to sharing usernames, users will often herald screenshots of their snapcodes, which are QR codes that new users can scan using their Snapchat cameras to automatically accumulate them as a friend. If you dont want a bunch of random users extra you as a friend, dont proclaim a screenshot of your snapcode anywhere online. Snapchats Memories feature allows you to keep snaps previously you send them or save stories of your own that you already posted. all you have to reach is tap the tiny bubble below the camera button to view a collage of all the snaps you saved, which is convenient for showing them to links youre past in person. Some snaps that you save, however, may be vital to save private. in view of that once youre showing connections your memories on your device, you can avoid quickly swiping through those snaps you dont want them to look by disturbing them to your My Eyes lonesome section in the past you play in them off. 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First of All, What Exactly Is a Snapchat friend Emoji? The Snapchat app tracks your messaging habits behind your associates both to individuals and groups and later assigns an emoji to them, which represents the current status of your level of interaction. As you continue to send and receive messages, the emoji will tweak exceeding time. Likewise, if you stop messaging for awhile, the emoji may disappear completely. Snapchat friend Emoji Meanings Each emoji you look not in favor of a friends post means something virtually your peace upon Snapchat (not necessarily your harmony in genuine life, of course). There are currently six swap emoji youll be skillful to see, which include: Two pink hearts: If you see the two pink hearts next to a friends username, it means that this pal has been your number on a best friend on Snapchat or your Super BFF for a whopping two months in a row. It as a consequence means that you have been that friends number one best pal out of all of their associates as well, for two months. Red heart: After the orange heart comes to the red heart your BFF if you remain each others number one best friends for a grow old of two weeks. Yellow heart: If you havent been snapping anyone long acceptable yet but started snapping a pal more frequently, you could look the ocher heart, which appears afterward they are your #1 best friend and you are their #1 best friend. Smiling point behind pleased eyes: An emoji subsequently laughing eyes and incandescent cheeks not in favor of a friends broadcast means that theyre substitute one of you best friends (but not your number one). Smirking face: taking into consideration you see an emoji subsequently a smirk on its direction aligned with a friends name, it means that youre that friends best friend, but theyre not your best friend. (You have a different best friend.) Grimacing face: A smiley bearing his teeth as if grimacing beside a friends post means that your number one best pal is their number upon a best friend as well. Sunglasses face: If you look a sunglass-wearing smiley position next to a username, it means that one of your best contacts is one of their best associates too. Fire: If youre super responsive upon Snapchat, you may look a fiery ember emoji appear critical of someones name, meaning that youre upon a snapstreak. Youve been snapping back and forth afterward them a lot exceeding the subsequently several days, and the longer you attach taking into consideration it, the far ahead next snapstreak number youll look not in favor of the fire emoji. Sparkles: If youre snapping in the same way as fused connections as a group, youll see the moving picture emoji appear neighboring to it, which can urge on you identify all the associates youre including in society chats. Baby: A baby emoji bordering to a friends pronounce means that theyre a further pal that was just added. Hint: You Can Customize Your friend Emojis! Want to know a fun Snapchat trick? You can actually tweak the emojis for all the interactions listed above correspondingly that you look the precise emojis you desire to see adjacent to your friends names. Simply navigate to the camera tab, tap upon the ghost icon at the summit to tug by the side of your profile tab, tap the gear icon in the top right to right of entry your settings and after that tap rule Preferences below Additional Services. On the bordering tab, tap pal Emojis and there youll look a list of every the emojis taking into consideration their corresponding meanings. view private snapchat can tap any one of them to actually set that specific associations to any emoji you want. For example, if you wanted your Super BFF emoji to be the pile of poo emoji on the other hand of the two pink hearts, subsequently you can very reach that. If you do, any epoch you have a Super BFF, the pile of poo emoji will appear neighboring to that friends post in the talk tab.

#view private snapchat

[wingedweasel]

Would you rather...

Sorry for the super long post, but...

So my eyes were i a hostage situation with Twitter earlier, and I noticed a bunch of people posting things like ‘would you rather have $X or $Y?’ where x is an extremely huge amount and Y is a comically smaller amount. One was along the lines of ‘would you rather have one billion dollars all at once or 15 cents every day?’ The point of these is to bring up the idea of passive income and how it’s better to have steady income over large lump sums.

However, when it’s these comically small amounts, it would be better to have the lump sum. There was one that offered one million vs one dollar every day. Ummm, the million...? Every time. I’d choose the lump sum. Sure if it’s something like one million vs 10,000 every month, then okay, yeah, the parsed out payments would be better. I mean, yeah, it would take 10 years to get the same amount, but you would be getting more in the long run. Also, in these hypotheticals, there is no end date, so taking the monthly payment would be better since you could assume that you would keep getting the payments until you die. 

But - and this is the thing that got me questioning if I was missing something - why would anyone take the super small amount? If it was $1 a day, rounding all months to have 30 days, then you’d only be getting 360 a year, 3600 in 10 years. Why would anyone want that compared to having the lump sum of 1 million? 

What could you even do in that situation anyway? We’ve all seen those commercials “With $1 a day, you could save the life of a child/animal” uh...but I wouldn’t be spending $1 a day. I’d have to pay a large amount, that  yes, technically comes out to $1 a day, but I wouldn’t be getting a daily charge of $1. Getting $1 a day wouldn’t help anyone. As I said before, that’s less than 1000 a year. Even if it was somehow able to pass along to your descendants, it would take 2-3 of your descendants’ lifetimes to get to 1 million. And this is all assuming that you never touch any of that money in all of these lifetimes. 

I’m sorry, but no. That’s not gonna work for me. Especially if it’s something stupid like 15 cents a day. No, gimme the lump sum and I’d show you that I could make more with that lump sum than any low daily amount. 

This piggy backs off my belief of ‘sort yourself out before trying to sort other people out.’ This stems from having to grow up watching the people around me run themselves ragged trying to help others out of financial binds while they didn’t have the funds to do. I’d usually get the shaft because of that, and any financial decisions I had to make - when I was actually able to make them - had to go through this kind of tiered system and rank what I wanted to do over the wants (not needs) of other people. It sucked, still does since I’m still stuck in this system because of the decisions of other people’s past mistakes and temper tantrums. But yeah, that’s why I believe that a person should help themselves before they help others. I get that this comes off as selfish or egocentric, very ‘me first’ Americanism, and on one hand it is, but it doesn’t mean I (and the hypothetical others) don’t give to the poor or help others when they need it. It just means that I don’t think it’s good for you when you are guilted (or tricked depending on how you look at it) into opening a credit card to a tire shop when you don’t even have a license so that your sister can get her car fixed even though she has a very well paid job, but for some reason can’t afford to pay her bills and continues to not learn from her past mistakes by spending all her money as soon as she gets paid, constantly going on trips to Vegas, and seems to be always doing some money spending activity every weekend. 

Why are you asking if this was something that happened to me? What ever gave you that idea?

Anyway, getting back on tract of proving the lump sum is better: First, obviously, I’d pay off my debts. For me, I’m fortunate enough that it isn’t a massive amount, still a lot, but not hundreds of thousands. I won’t have to worry about a huge amount that I have to pay every month and not have to decide which bill gets the late fee this time. School loans, credit cards, not so much debits but a few people have gifted me various amounts to help pay my tuition, so I’d want to pay them back. I don’t have to because they were gifts, but I feel guilty that I had to ask them for money. 

Next, I would sort out my living situation. I would move to a better neighborhood in which I would buy a house there. I would also take the time to learn to drive and buy a car. I would have to outfit my new home, and while that can take a good chunk of money, second hand stores, Craigslist and the castaways from friends would help with a lot of that. I’d need to outfit almost everything because I would not be living with anyone else except my fur babies. In this fantasy, I’m saying fuck everyone else, I’m moving far far away from my family of leeches and never seeing seeing them again. I might send birthday/holiday cards/gifts to the ones I kinda get on with like my nieces and the one uncle that is actually a decent person, but everyone else can piss right the fuck off. They took advantage of me whenever I had money - more often when I didn’t have money and somehow managed to squeeze everything out of me then - so why should I help them when I have money now? Harsh? Absolutely. Petty? As fuck. 

After that, I’d invest. Obviously. If the point of the would you rather was to teach about the benefits of sustained constant income, then investing is the best way to do that. Investing in companies that have a history of doing well. Having a diverse portfolio is something that I’ve heard wealthy people talk about, so if one investment doesn’t pan out, I wouldn’t lose everything. Sounds...sound. I’d also take the time to invest in me. I’d finally be able to afford the hobbies and skills that I couldn’t before. I’d take back up with music and be able to afford lessons. I do better when someone is beside me telling me what I’m doing wrong and showing me how to do it correctly. Ex, I tried learning Japanese outside of a class setting and just couldn’t wrap my head around the basic sentence structure: XはYです. For some reason, my brain couldn’t figure out that x and y were nouns and it basically translates to X is Y. My brain freaked out, and I just couldn’t. However, day 1 of class, the figurative lightbulb went off and went “oh.” and laughed for a solid 10 minuets as soon as I got home. Musical instruments are the same way. I’ve tried to lear guitar and violin several times, but all without an instructor. Can’t do it. Hiring a personal trainer would be helpful as well. Getting someone to kick me in the butt about my fitness would go a long way in helping me reach my goals. Language tutors as well. I’ve maxed out my ability to learn at the community collage I take classes at, even though it’s been over 10 years since I took those classes, but I passed them so they’ve said screw you. While technically I could do all these things for free - there are various websites, YT tutorials, and Duolingo - like I said, I need that live teacher/student interaction for it to click. 

Finally, as I said above, help yourself before you help others, so now that I’ve helped myself, I can now start helping others. Not my family. Fuck them. However, there are friends that have helped me so much over the years, and now that there is money that I can actually use - remember those investments? They’d have started to see returns by now - I can now start ‘paying’ them back for all that they did. It may not always be money that they would give, just being a shoulder to cry on meant more than anything at times so they’d deserve something as compensation for putting up with my issues. However, because I would now be in a good place. I could literally afford to go ‘here, here is a little something to show how much you mean to me and as a small step in saying thank you for all that you did.’ I could also now go, ‘I see you are struggling, so here is something that you can use to help get out of the bad situation.’ This was - and still is - something that made me feel so guilty that I couldn’t do when I was younger. I’d see a friend need something - or even just really want, we were kids after all - but I sometimes couldn’t even spare a dollar to help them. Helping others also means gifting to charity. I have always wanted to be able to donate to charities, to give money to panhandlers - I don’t care some of them use the money for drugs or alcohol, the small amount who do do that shouldn���t cause you to not give to those who don’t - remember those commercials from before? Even if some of the charities suck major ass, there are some really good ones that I would love to be a donor. I could afford to be a Patron member for certain YTers, I could donate to small Twitch streamers. Kickstarters and GoFundMes would see my name on the donor list. Animal shelters and children’s hospitals; after school programs and community centers; friends and neighbors. I could do so much.

But it certainly wouldn’t happen if I received $1 a day. 

[williamsockner]

SPN S3E10 “Dream a Little Dream of Me” Watchnotes

Time for the episode that balances actual character growth with the brothers being complete boneheads who can’t count to ten without verbal directions.

Sam: It occurs to me that you might be suicidally depressed. Dean: wow rude

Bobby: /has a bunch of Pepe Silvia-esque cut-outs and strings with tacks in the back of a closet, glaringly visible to anyone who opens the closet door The boys: omg Bobby’s so cool and slick and genius he hid this serial killer collage like a champ

Dean thinks didgeridoos are from Africa.

Sam please wash your hair.

In which the boys demonstrate to Bela, a world-class thief who has screwed them over many times in the past, exactly where they’re hiding a unique highly-coveted monster-killing item that they desperately need (in a safe in the motel room), and then proceed to knock themselves out on fantasy ayahuasca. Good job, kids. A+.

I’m annoyed that the raining-upside-down bit is the only bit that feels truly like a dream sequence in this episode.

The boys don’t recognize Bobby’s house despite distinctive wallpaper that sears the camera so bad it gets lens flare.

Honestly, it’s horribly tragic that Bobby learned after killing his wife that there were simple ways that he could have saved her. I feel like there are a lot of real life parallels and they all hurt.

On the rewatch it’s interesting that while Bobby clearly loves Sam too, Dean and Bobby are a lot closer, and I figure it’s because Dean spent his childhood years around Bobby so much more enmeshed in the hunter lifestyle and always had a greater understanding of who Bobby was when he was growing up.

Evidence Dean Winchester is a fire sign: Dean Winchester: /stays up 52 straight hours hoovering caffeine Dean Winchester: /still driving a fucking car around in the goddamn middle of absolute nowhere, flips his shit at the suggestion he might need to pull over

See, they wouldn’t even need to call on Bela if they would just learn to use the fucking weggy boards themselves like they know from experience they could if they just bothered to try. It drives me crazy that they don’t use the weggy boards! This is up there with “use your cell phones” and “photocopy the journal” as my biggest peeves!

Why ARE they out here in the middle of nowhere, anyway?

Dean: /dreams of having a family with a beautiful wife in front of Sam Dean: LIES LIES SAMMY THESE ARE LIES I WANT MANLY STUFF LIKE INDEPENDENCE AND ANONYMOUS SEX

The switch from forest to the hallway forest wallpaper was a really lovely bit of camera work.

“I know how dead inside you feel…I know you look in the mirror and hate what you see” sometimes the dialogue on this show just pulls a shotgun and blows subtlety to high heavens.

Honestly, the villain in this episode is sympathetic - the idea of living exhausted and unable to sleep for fifteen years, getting a cure, and then having someone rip that cure away from you is actually pretty horrifying and would explain (though not justify) resorting to murder. Maybe I’m just relating to the monster of the week because I haven’t slept worth shit in weeks, but man. I feel this guy and I’m annoyed that no one was like “we got a bunch of the fantasy ayahuasca you want, let’s resolve this peacefully like adults and not like the mouthbreathing cro-magnon frat-jocks we are”.

Dream!Dean: so like may be we should try Zoloft or cognitive behavioral therapy or like yoga or something Real!Dean: have we considered just sticking to self-loathing

“Daddy’s blunt little instrument” actually breaks my heart, every once in a blue moon this show hits the mark on the emotional beat so well.

Swear to God, hamfisted or not, Dean’s “I don’t deserve what Dad put on me and I don’t deserve to go to Hell” tirade while he beats the shit out of and then murders a dream version of himself is the most satisfying character growth on the show so far. I’m legitimately proud of him for recognizing that his complete lack of self-esteem is actually a problem and that it’s not actually founded in anything real but just in John using him as an emotional punching bag his whole life.

Sam using the villain’s abusive father as the nightmare person to kill him is a particular level of asshole, like…damn, Sam. You got dark. I’m not sure I love you anymore. Glad that Bela sticking around and using the weggy boards amounted to fuck all.

OH I GUESS WE’RE COOL WITH KILLING NORMIES NOW, A’IGHT.

of course Bela stole the Colt you battery-licking morons, you basically sky-wrote her an invitation to do exactly that

Dean: so it turns out maybe i’m not suicidal 100% of the time Sam: so yeah, this would have been a really great realization to have before you made an irrevocable suicide pact Dean: yeah bad timing on my part :\

#spookernaturalz #stupidnatural #this episode was good #i love this show #and also bela

[paracosmcentral]

Multiverse Cosm (Messaged Explanation Comp)

i haven’t decided on names yet so i’ll just use the names of the lhp paras they were based off basically there are multiple universes each with different possibilities but they all stem from the Original which is like the og plane of existence except nothing really happens in the og it’s like the og has all the basic information and then all the multiverses take that basic info and spin it into something like the og has all the basic character info, and then all the multiverses are fanfictions/story ideas that use it canon or not the og has the most basic info that is consistent throughout but nothing really happens in it or if something does we don’t understand it if you ever try to visit the og it’s very disorienting it’s like you don’t feel anything or know anything nothing happens except that you’re existing you don’t even know how, if you even have a physical form you just know that you exist but basically something happens and the Glass Collage Effect commences

no official names yet but basically shiro, hyunseung and hanbin do… something that causes the multiverse to overlap and conjoin over the Original it’s like when you have a bunch of random glass shards and they’re all so different but you try to make a collage of them but it doesn’t really work out bc you have all these random colors and shapes and they don’t fit or if they do it’s not very neatly and there’s cracks everywhere and some holes you need to fill with an excessive amount of glue and it might look kind of pretty if you’re optimistic enough but for the most part it’s very obviously not working out

that’s what happens with multiverses the multiverses are like the glass pieces that make the collage and the Original is the platform on which they were built and all those cracks and stuff where the glass meet in the multiverses, they are known as splits so now all the different variations of people are either conjoined multi-identities or are separate existences on different glass shards

our main focus: shiro, hyunseung, and hanbin’s characters and wooji, jin sun, xiao yi and abraham’s characters for background xiao yi is like shiro’s unofficial son unofficial for no other reason than shiro isn’t 18 yet but once her birthday comes around she intends to be his legal guardian and jinsun and wooji are stray foster kids who hyunseung saved from shitty lives and got adopted by hyunseung’s uncle jinho and abraham is this very quiet but sweet babie boy who’s friends with the others and has a nice little bond with hanbin

so there are androids, digitized consciences, rescue missions, revivals basically a big part of this is that we don’t understand a lot about the multiverse and how it works and that’s ok a large portion of this story is the characters trying to figure things out and make it work but ultimately no one can truly comprehend it all

so hyunseung, shiro and hanbin from one of the multis finds a way to hop through different multis and eventually finds a way to get onto the Original but it’s because of that, that everything goes to shit nothing from the multis are meant to be in the Original the lack of substance on the Original acts as a repellent of sorts to all the multis like opposite ends of a magnet the multis are distanced enough that they don’t collide into each other but sometimes an attraction occurs, and that’s how some people wind up experiencing moments on an alternate universe that’s where all those stories come from

idk how to explain what it feels like to exist in the Original to be a basis it’s not something that can be put into words i can barely understand it myself it’s like you don’t really have any form you exist but not really it’s really weird it’s something you feel except you can’t actually feel anything the Original just is yeah it’s a weird oxymoron thing it makes sense in my head just not in words

now the Glass Collage Effect it doesn’t erase the Original bc then as far as we know the multis would like cease to exist or something no one really knows but it’s like you know how you have a sheet of paper on which you glue all your collage pieces? it’s like the Original is a board on which all the glass shards (multis) were glued onto and remember how there are gaps that are overfilled with glue?

well the multis (as in the people) can sort of jump? through the verses the edges of the verses that connect to one another are called splits you can leap(?) through a split but certain splits lead to those holes and if you leap there you get thrown directly into the Original

the people multis are basically everyone inhabiting the multiverses so like us there are variations of us in all the different verses and now bc of this whole overlap thing you can leap through splits to access other verses but those holes that throw you into the Original the Original literally cannot hold you you’ll be viciously tossed around and feel the most extreme and foreign and weirdest sensations and then get thrown up into the nearest verse every case of this ends up with severely mutilated bodies like the Original is a stomach that can’t digest or hold you so you become vomited

but back to multis as in the people shiro, hyunseung and hanbin had temporarily transported into the Original and this was before the Glass Collage Effect so they didn’t get thrown up it was more like you know how you put something in your mouth but it doesn’t even get down your throat bc you reject it before it does and just spit it out whole that’s how it was for them except when they got spit out the Effect had taken place their split second presence in the Original caused it

now i’m going to explain something about the Original it’s the most basic of them all and has the basis for all the multiverses but nothing quite exists, but still exists there are some consistencies in all the multiverses vastly different, but you can still draw some kind of similarity they are all children of the same Original after all but these consistencies are bc of something in the Original called connections connections are relations between basis identities it’s like the Original has the most basic code, some of which is relevant to each other and then the multiverses are all that can be made from building and developing off of that

so bc of that when shiro, hyun and hanbin get spit back out everyone who’s basis identity had a connection with theirs all their forms across the verses become merged but bc of all the imbalance and shit memories are sort of flying in there you have vague recollections at best but for shiro, hyun and hanbin it was different as they were the ones who actually entered the Original all their identities are merged but not like anyone else’s you know how they say cats have 9 lives they lose one, there’s a second it’s like that, but each multiverse identity would be a “life”

it’s like a game and when they lose a level, they lose a life and when they restart the level, it’s with another life but the lives in question are the multi identities and this is where the androids come in the 3 find a way to exist within a literal split so not like on the planes themselves but the split so you can’t actually access it they create a hideout of sorts i guess and they make it so that their conscience is kind of like extracted from their bodies it’s like their physical bodies are within this hideout thing contained and then their consciences are physically separated though still connected non-physically and everytime they start a new life/ use a new multi identity the identity doesn’t take a physical form but rather becomes transformed into a form of energy that powers an android and the conscience of that android and the conscience of the original human is connected via that separated ball of conscience whatever tf it is

now here’s the thing this glass collage it’s being held together rn but it’s so delicate and unstable and weak that it’ll just break and then nothing will be restored bc it’ll be swallowed and vomited by the Original but then everything within the Original will essentially have no purpose (a lot of the plot stuff is kind of metaphorically about breaking away and defining yourself and like actually becoming yourself instead of becoming what’s written in stone and stuff like that)

so yeah all the androids powered by multi identities work together and leap through multiverses to figure out how to prevent the glass collage from imploding they don’t know what to do or how to do it or anything really but they work it out by failing and replaying “levels” until they win

now meanwhile the merged multi identities of wooji, jin sun, xiao yi and abraham are searching for those 3 trying to find them which involves a lot of redefining and learning themselves they run into “shiro”, “hyunseung” and “hanbin” a couple times not knowing those are actually various android forms and stuff

but basically they all eventually figure out that although the Original exists and the basis identities exist the basis identities aren’t fated destinies that define them so much as the destinies they’ve defined for themselves bc remember, time is technically a place so although at the beginning of the journey they weren’t really them

they eventually do become who they are now but instead of thinking of it as a time a vs time b thing in which case the application of the Original wouldn’t really work think of it as time is a cross-multiversal place and different times are different locations across time so it’s more of a place a vs place b thing in which case the characters had already formed their identities and shaped themselves but in a different location

idk if i’m explaining this coherently or not sksksk

#multiverse cosm #submission

[girllustrators]

POP-UP WORKSHOP

KEEPING THE SPONTANEITY IN YOUR ART

Q: How does one get to finished art without getting bogged down and stiff in the process, ending up with overworked art?

A: This is a continual challenge for many illustrators at all levels. Some artists use their hand-drawn sketches in their final art, as in Patty, Emma and Vanessa’s energetic characters. Others use media that have a sort of mind of their own, as Amy does with her playful watercolor work…though one has to invest the time playing and experimenting with the materials to avoid losing control altogether. For her acrylic line work, Lalena uses “crappy old brushes” for the raw quality of their marks. Paradoxically, digital technology can help with retaining spontaneity and energy. Photoshop and similar software allows you to composite the best of your sketches, scanned textures, painted marks, and fills. Software can give you a lot of freedom to explore, while still having a lot of control. We certainly don’t have a magic answer to this, but we do have strategies, and shared them at a recent meeting:

LALENA: I find that the more detailed the illustration, the more danger I am in with stiffness. Because there are more pieces that I have to get right, that have to work together—and you have to spend time coordinating all of that. By that time, the spontaneity is gone!

EMMA: I’m working on a new dummy book; Normally I have to do all the pages in order because of my OCD, but this time I followed my heart, did the spreads as I felt inspired, and felt much better about it. I had been stuck on pages 16-17; I did it a few times and I kept getting the same result, so I thought, “Well, I’ll go to a different page and come back to it.” And it was like I’d just invented sliced bread!

RIVKAH: I can identify with your OCD; I can’t jump between projects. Part of my approach to avoid getting bogged down is to save details until the end.

EMMA: Sometimes it does help if I stop and draw something else.

LUZ MARIE: I have to do that too.

RACHEL: I have to start with a lot of structure in order to end up in a place where I feel comfortable and can be looser. Throwing pasta at the wall doesn’t work for me.

ELIZA: It helps to have thumbnails prepared and problems figured out beforehand.

PATTY: Right—you get the thinking part done, then you can go to painting and have fun. I draw sketches and then trace them and scan them, and layer in textures. Sometimes I’ll trace over the sketches some, but other times the original sketches are just right.

RACHEL: I do a thumbnail, very ugly and loose, scan and print it, then trace it doing a more refined sketch, but still not finished-finished. Then I trace that with the final line. With each step, something is added. Each step is a guide for the next step.

VANESSA: When I do collage, I keep the backgrounds separate. Then I can be loose because I’m not going to mess up where the characters go. Then I cut out the characters and put them on the background; I can move them around that way. Or I’ll use Photoshop, doing same thing. Lucy was all Prismacolor pencil with watercolor line around silhouettes, and no backgrounds at all. But if I’m loose, I ask myself: Is it too messy? Do I clean it up, or then will it be too clean? Or use Photoshop? Then it can look overworked. I dunno, it’s tough.

EMMA: Technology is definitely part of my process. I draw in charcoal, clean up the line in Photoshop, then use Illustrator’s autotrace function.

LALENA: Eliza, you showed us your new dummy book, and your painted work is always so enviably spontaneous-looking. How would you do the final art, so that you’d keep that quality?

ELIZA: I make sure I have a thumbnail, then I just go crazy. I might do practice air-brushstrokes, or test a stroke on another piece of paper. Then once I have it right, I do it on the final paper. If I’m not in a hurry it can help. If I mess up, I do sometimes fix it in the computer.

PATTY: It helps to know you can fix it if you need to.

ELIZA: If I overwork it, I realize it right away. I just have to start over. I do always test the brush, and switch brushes if I think it’ll help.

RIVKAH: Do y’all know Quentin Blake? He illustrated the Roald Dahl books. His illustrations are just a bunch of squiggles! He has these huge pieces of paper, and draws the same picture over and over quickly, until he gets it right!

#illustration #girllustrators #loose drawing #childrens illustration #kidlitart #SCBWI #scbwi austin #Women Illustrators #picture book illustration #illustration technique #illustration methods #illustration craft #children's books #children's literature

[fandom-imagination-ss]

Requested by sparkle -light : Will you please do an imagine based on the scene between Elijah and gia where he teaches her how to fight and Hayley walks in (2x04), but its Klaus and reader instead and Caroline walks in? thanks!

Authors note : I am so Sorry that this took so long!! I also hope you enjoy it! I’m a huge Klaus and Caroline shipper! And I absolutely LOVE the Mikaelson brothers! Elijah, Klaus and Caroline deserve better! Hopefully you like this imagine!

⚠️ warning: Not really.

Number count: 1889

**********imagine **************** You know Klaus since he showed up in mystic falls. He has always found Caroline to be a beautiful vibrant women. You found Caroline too be a stuck up, perfectionist. But you Knew it was because she doubted herself. So you tried not to let her annoy you. It helped that you weren’t friends with Caroline so you didn’t spend much time with her. Everyone who knows Klaus knows he fancy Caroline since meeting her. When klaus met you. He was attracted too your kindness. Unlike Elena, Caroline, basically everyone connected to the doppelgänger Elena. You didn’t have a twisted agenda. Caroline trying too save her boyfriend from Klaus. (You understood why everyone hated Klaus but you saw thru him. Seeing the real Klaus) You were the only person Klaus could talk to. Without having a hidden agenda. You didn’t want blood, or money or anything all you wanted too do was talk about your passions Art, music , History. And Klaus was intoxicated by your curious mind. And your Kind heart. Everyone tried too convince you too stay away from him. Elena, Caroline, Tyler, Jeremy, Damon, Bonnie, the only one who almost convinced you was Stefan. But he got distracted By Elena and Damon so you were able too leave the conversation.

You Simply saw Klaus as Klaus. A Monster. But redeemable. He’s siblings soon realized you were a good inferences on their baby brother so they fully accepted you into their little family. His siblings Elijah , and Rebecca enjoyed your company. Kol was fascinated by your loyal and gentle heart. Rebecca Enjoyed your innocence and Taste in fashion. Elijah for your Mind and how you were Showing Klaus the world for the first time. when graduation happened. Klaus declared to Caroline that she might of loved Tyler but he intended to be her last love. You overheard and was swooned hearing it. And was stunned seeing how Caroline didn’t take up Klaus offer. Klaus decided for a graduation present he would give Caroline a bunch of money. And Give you a Plane ticket to New Orleans. Klaus offered the world too both Caroline and yourself. She didn’t accept. But you did. You a human girl proved over and over again that Klaus was redeemable. Elijah and Rebecca accepted you as a member of the family. Rebecca shopped with you. Making you gain more confidence. Elijah helped you study for tests at the local collage you attended. You were all a complicated family the happiness was destroyed by accident. Davina and Kol did a spell, trying too get ride of Klaus The spell was suppose to Kill him instantly . But it hit you. Klaus barely shoved blood down your throat before you died. And when you woke up. He didn’t give you a option too other die a human or too be turned. You woke up. And Klaus instantly shoved human blood down your throat. Simply saying “I can’t live without you Y/n. Forgive me.” Three months passed. Your “day time ring” was a beautiful simple Ruby necklace. Klaus said it use to be worn by a beautiful princess who was always surrounded by handsome suitors. Today klaus was back. Since becoming a vampire you changed. Not just physically but mentally. You were still caring and the gentlest soul Klaus ever met. But now your confidence skyrocketed. But your fighting skills? Not so much! Klaus insisted on Training you too fight. You tried convincing Klaus to let Elijah to teach you. Mainly since you figured Elijah would be a kinder more gentle teacher vs Klaus. You almost had him convinced till he got into a heated debate with Caroline who dating Stefan or was trying too? Honestly Caroline love life was almost as complicated as Elena’s love life. But either way Klaus refused to listen too either you or Elijah when you both suggested to let him teach you. So here you are! standing in a closed room. Everyone was out enjoying the bright beautiful day. While Klaus was huffing and puffing annoyed at Caroline, he just returned from Mystic falls where he got into a huge debut with Caroline about Elena. And Stefan. You tried staying out of all topics surrounding Elena. Mainly because you couldn’t find the attraction both Salvator brothers had for her. Or what Matt saw in her. You aren’t close with Caroline or Elena. Bonnie on the other hand? You were great friends with Bonnie!. Either way you aren’t going too have a great practice with Klaus. He was frustrated and you knew this wasn’t going too end up with you being sore. And begging for Elijah too take over.!

Klaus spoke up, snapping you out of your thoughts. Too hear His British charming accent. It always made you lean a bit closer to hear him speak. you loved hearing him talk. When you first became friends with Klaus you got sick. And Klaus read the Hobbit too you. While you rested in bed. So you listened too him whenever possible. Especially now when you here. About too Fight Him. “you are my responsibility, Y/N. There will be hundreds of people who would love too rip you too pieces just because of Me.” Klaus walked around you. Trying to frighten you. It didn’t work. Even when you were human and his vines turned all black around his eyes. You were’t scared of him. Klaus grabbed your shoulder turning you around too face him. “Fighting is rhythm. There is a music , there is a pattern. You have too fight. Or you will die!” You rolled your eyes, pushing his hands off your shoulders, “Why? You can just fight them? Besides who would dare fight me? Everyone is terrified of you!” “exactly. What would happen if the wolves. Capture you too get too me? Or the witches?” Sighing heavily you understood. Klaus can’t protect you from everything. Even those you knew no one would be stupid enough too risk the Rath of Klaus. You simply Nodded your head fast., taking a step back to take a stance saying you were ready. Klaus grinned as you swinger a pouch at him. He easily blocked it. “You have too do it better! Y/N!” Swinging your fist towards your best friend, to only have it caught it with ease. Klaus pinned you against a brick wall. Pressing you against It. Moving your hair from your shoulders. He waited a moment just looking at you till he spoke in a low voice. “Come Now love. You can do better then that.”

Breaking free from his grip. You turned yourself around, too shoved him hard, Klaus took three steps backwards as you charged him. He broke free from your attack. Screaming “ Do better y/n!” You charged again getting him this time. You Pinned Klaus against the same wall he pinned you at. Klaus grinned brightly feeling your hand at his heart. “Good.” Looking up at his eyes. His beautiful enchanting eyes. He grabbed your elbow. “Good. , you did good.. Don’t be afraid to go for the kill.” “I’m not going too rip your heart out!” Klaus grinned reaching up touching your face with his free hand. He’s eyes soften. He smiled softly looking at his favorite being on the entire planet. The sweet girl who has touched every member of his family. Who taught him how too change diapers for Hope. Who has personality helped him stay good. And showed him to change his ways. He vowed too protect you for the rest of your life. A human mortal life. Which was ruined. But now he had too break the sweetness of you.. To help you survive where everyone outside of the house. He and his family had thousands of enemies now he had too teach you too survive. Looking down at your hand right in front of his hand hand. Breathing deeply you couldn’t harm Klaus not in the way he wanted you too. He noticed your hesitation. He sighed moving his hand too your wrist. Looking at you. “You have too.. to Survive.” Shaking your head fast. “Nope.. I can’t-“ moving your hand back he placed it back too his Chest as he reached back placing your hand back too his Chest. “You have too.. our enemies wont take it easy just because your beautiful.” “Klaus.. I can’t-“ “Love.. Do it!” You closed your eyes for a second before you pushed your hand thru his cage. Hearing him groaning loudly you opened your eyes seeing him gasping for air. Until he pulled you into a kiss. Which started you. It made you stop holding his heart as he cupped your face. You pulled back looking at him. Klaus looked at you valuable you couldn’t believe he kissed you. And you couldn’t believe how. Fragile he looked. You never seen him look so valuable. You grabbed his face with both hands pulling him into another kiss. Vampires feel things ten times more then humans. A little crush felt like full blown love. And being in love is incredible. You pulled back. Looking at Klaus ripping his shirt completely off. He grinned flashing that devilish smile. Before pulling you into another kiss. He turned you both around fast so your back was against the wall. As he ripped your shirt off before kissing you back. You smiled into the kiss as he pressed himself close too you. “Klaus?” You both pulled back. Stunned seeing Caroline standing there. Right at the doorway. You quickly tried to close together your ripped apart your shirt too have some Dignity. Also so Caroline doesn’t notice your Black sport bra. Klaus sighed heavily as he spoke “what is it Caroline?” “I need Help. Stefan is missing.” Klaus surprised you. And Caroline with his response “well. I’m a tad busy at the moment Caroline.” Caroline rolled her eyes saying she was serious she needed his help when she noticed you. “Holly Crap! Y/N you’re a vampire?” Nodding your head weakly she shook her head stepping closer too Klaus, “Klaus I need your help please!” Klaus sighed heavily as he spoke, “like always Caroline your timing is horrible!” He turned too face you kissing you. It was a quick kiss but he made sure it was passionate. As he cupped your face, “I’ll find you in a bit. After Caroline and her dramatic life dilemma is done. Then we can finish.” “training or this?” You asked as he grinned ignoring Carolines huffs and Puffs as he kissed you quickly, “Both.” You laughed at that as Klaus escorted Caroline out of the room. You breathed deeply and debated on other going for a 7 mile run too work out your now Frustration or a freezing cold shower!. You decided both.

#klaus mikaelson #klaus mikaelson imagine #elijah mikaelson #elijah mikaelson imagine #tvd #tvd imagines #the vampire daries imagine #the vampire daries #the orignals #the originals imagine #fandom imagine #imagine #requested #sparkle-light #@sparkle-light #imaigne

[honestlymydude]

Brittany's Transcript v2

Volume 2 of my motw character Brittany's Transcripts for our monster hunting agency Black Fox.

      To be honest, this whole mess didn’t even need to involve us, and yet, here we are. It started when Ekade decided she needed some art from Fonz or whatever his name is, so we decided to head on down to his art show after Ekade got us an invite. We got some proper clothes, (that I had to buy because I have two freeloaders in my house, and neither of them know fashion in the slightest) and we went up to his house. He had a whole party going on. It was actually quite fun to begin with. The people were actually pretty interesting, and mostly genuine. I’m used to hipsters and art snobs, so this was a good change of pace. One biker chick there was named Lovella, she was awesome.

      Anyway. Monster. I go to a separate cabin, little earlier than normal, for.. reasons. Ekade falls asleep under a tree. Don’t know why that is. That’s just kind of how she is. But apparently we both had a similar dream. In mine I was standing back in my senior year prom, rocking the little red dress I wore to it. It was pretty standard affair, tables with punch and food, a disco ball, loud music, you’ve seen movies. But this time, it was just me there. And it was in the center of a volcano. So that’s fun. I was pretty lucid, pretty sure it was a dream, so I was kinda just chilling. A guy with a hard like Boston accent starting talking to me, offering me shit. Like money, fame, whatever. I’ve seen movies and shit too though, I know how this shit goes. So I told him to fuck off, and off he went. Apparently everyone else wasn’t that smart though huh.

      Ekade wished for Tylan to be safe, which I’m sure she told you. Nobody else made a wish, or so I’m told. Well, except for every other fucking person who stayed that night. Lovella wished for immortality, which almost certainly won’t work out. A kid wished for some extinct species of bee to exist, which did work out I guess. His mom wished for a million bucks and lost her kid because of it. Some musician guy wished for fame but he can’t wear clothes now so there’s that. Shirt off his back or whatever. I managed to convince Lovella after she woke up not to drink her immortality potion. (By stealing it and refusing to give it back but you know. For her own good and all that.) Managed to chat with her right after she woke up, luckily enough. So she was good, but now we had a missing kid on our hands. Which is just what you want at an art show.

      We track down a tree in the orchard out back that has a portal locked into it. Because that’s a thing apparently. We hop on through and end up somewhere weird. Some kind of nexus or whatever of this weird gray passages with lots of offshoots and passages. Kind of like the inside of a sphere, but perforated with a bunch of holes that lead off. We headed through. Ekade picked a passage based on instinct and we went with it. Straight up and out of the sphere, we ended up in a forest, somewhere in the world. We came out right next to a campsite, super old, with a dudes skeleton under a cut down tree. People started looting his stuff. He had some old daggers and such, and the ruins of the campsite were still there. I took a quick look into the past, which is apparently something I can do, and I watched what went down. These were hunters, looking to get at this wish giving thing. They had made some weird stake, but then one of them got crushed by a tree that someone cut through with a wire, and I guess they decided that was enough for them, because the thing they were hunting was still there. Anyway. We figured that was good enough for what’s going on here, and headed back down the portal, and wandered around a bit. Eventually we came out by a cabin on a sparkling lake, forested area, yada yada. Essentially, really pretty place.

      We come out of some portal by a tree and walked over to the cabin. Apparently this was the wish dude’s place because the cabin was covered in weird shit, like really weird shit. Knick knacks and clothes and whatever, a lot of it repurposed, stitched together and such, to the point that it was a nonsensical collage of weird objects that were probably sentimental to someone. There was a cow there too. So that’s cool. There was also a woman there who had apparently lived there all her life, had the wish dude bring her food and provide for her. And the bee kid was here, so we found him. Hooray, go team! Then wish guy showed up. I ended up missing most of what was happening, cuz I was staring at the house the whole time. Because uh.. because I was. It was the horrible tackiness of the design I think. Couldn’t tear myself away while they talked. I think it probably went something like this.

Wish Dude: You knew what you were doing, you made your deals!

Someone else: You intentionally misled people, you prick!

Wish Dude: No refunds, returns, or exchanges!

Someone else: Well fuck you!

      And then we fought. Big fight scene, wish dude turned into a giant waterfall man for a minute there, people were shooting and whatever. I missed the beginning of the fight when I flew bee kid out of there, which, oh yeah, I can do now. Big old fire wings finally functional. It looks pretty badass, not gonna lie. (Four wings actually, two big ones up top and two little ones underneath. Not aerodynamic probably but neither is fire so. Magic.) I flew bee kid over to the portal, came back just in time to give ol wish dude a big blast of fire straight to the face before Virgil managed to finish him off with his razor whip thing.

      Long story short, we killed the thing, saved the day and I totally had great sex with Lovella. It was a pretty successful trip all told. The lady turned out to be Fonz’s sister if I remember correctly, and bee kid got back to his mom. I just kinda chilled, while Virgil tore up the tree and the rest of the group caught some of those bees. I’m assuming this is all for Raquel, Virgil’s weird mentor-thing, who is almost defo an angel and more importantly, shady as fuck. She might read this but well. Fuck it, I don’t trust her. Don’t really care if she knows that. Anyway. We did the thing. Saved the day. Case closed. Peace out nerds.

#ancient guardians #ocs #brittany

[fashionand-online]

Dear Dan,

I want to tell you some thoughts on a fragment called “The Last Judgment” accredited with Hieronymus Bosch.

The painting was first recorded in 1822 as part of the collection of the Städtliche Gallery in Nuremberg. Later on, it came in possession of the Bavarian State Painting Collection, which also belongs to the Alte Pinakothek.

This fragment painted on oak wood was found 1817 (about 400 years after its production!) in the depot of the Nuremberg Castle in Bavaria. The original must have been huge: the dimensions of the fragment are 60cm x 114cm! It is supposed to be the lower right part of a triptych, if you look at the very bottom left you can see a big amount of dark blue fabric, this is said to belong to a great, standing archangel Michael. In that case, the painting would look as followed: at the top Christ as a judge, underneath him Michael weighing the souls, to his left, the resurrection of the elect, angels leading to heaven, and to his right the saved fragment: the damned, demons dragging them to hell. This structure was quite a typical one for the 15th century (check out below the polyptych of the Last Judgment by Rogier van der Weyden). It wasn’t even known for a long time if Bosch painted it or not –the new consensus is that it’s painted by an anonymous Bosch follower. This fragment displays the immense popularity and relevance of Bosch for the painters of his time.

What I find so exciting about this painting is not only its visual appeal, the content is so overwhelming: it depicts in a way a “hell on earth”, a system of the afterlife on our world, a visualization of dystopia in our future.

We know that Bosch was rather conservative, he belonged to this re-moralist brotherhood in his hometown and nearly never left the village he lived in. Most of his commissioners were catholic royals and his paintings said to depict the horror people would suffer in hell -  a very creative horror though. The goal of his paintings was to depict this hell and create fear inside of the observer and therefore behave more morally correct. Nevertheless today his paintings fulfill some sort of different role, we find them amazing and fantastic, many see them as the pioneering precursors of the surrealist paintings and find similarities between Dali’s and other surrealist paintings and Bosch’s. It makes sense if I was a little Dali boy and would see one of this paintings I would’ve also been heavily inspired!

Even though most of his figures appear nude, the aspect of metamorphosis, collage of elements and transformation is highly linked to fashion design. In a way, I could see modern designs by JW Anderson, Jacquemus, Craig Green, Charles Jeffrey Loverboy and the likes popping up in his paintings. Bosch’s sceneries also remind me of big fetish parties from bird-perspective: people in weird costume next to naked women and men, all in rather experimental, almost painful poses, creeping around, in dream-like landscapes. Several Designers used his paintings as prints and inspiration for their creations, among them also Lee Alexander McQueen in his very last other-worldly collection.

I will describe a few of my favorite figures in this painting. On the left side of the painting, we see about 10 naked people crawling up from holes in the ground. The holes are dark slits, the earth seems to be spitting out people. Among others, we see a pope, two royals and also a priest or pastor, all identifiable by their headgear. The ground is hissing out flames. On center top we can see a green-ish demon, its spine-bones are bunching out strongly, its butt towards the viewer. Two big wings span from its back, a mix of butterfly, moth, and bird, very organic and delicate. It is looking at us, with big black shiny eyes. Kind of a cocky face expression. With its mouse or fox ears, it resembles a bat-demon somewhat. He’s farting on a tortured soul. Not far from it we can see a rather elegant humanoid bird-creature. It has legs and hands of a human and head and tail of a bird, the tail turns into something lizard-y. Its bulky body covered in a long yellow gown, with typical medieval sleeves, wide and long, adorned with white feathers at the hem. With a long metallic rake at hand, it seems to be pulling humans out of the soil. Underneath it, we find two rather funny promenading individuals. The first one is an old guy with a white hood around his face, to both sides of his head grow a few thin filigree feathers. Its facial expression displays annoyance or displeasure. The small body stands on four human feet and is shrouded in a blue cloak with white lace parts. A ridiculously big tail a la peacock-feather-meets-platypus peeks out from the cloak. The other figure has a slightly slimmer body shape. Its white skin is naked. The tail and head are of a mouse (or rat), the snout being very pointy red with extremely long white feelers. Its head is covered in a nun-like white cloth, crowned by a red pointy hat. It seems to have a boob, or an udder hanging from its torso. This weird figure is basically just standing there, quasi-hanging out in hell….

Next is a group of four dwarfs or ogres. These figures are very important because they wear oriental clothing and one of them bears the Turkish coat of arms symbol, the moon, on his turban. This is a typical symbol in medieval Christian painting: the Turkish as representatives of the whole Arabic world and Islamic culture, and furthers representing the bad, the evil enemy and the devil. In the very center of the painting, we can see a monster which looks like an explosion. It has no head, instead two tails at the bottom and top of its body. The colors from its skin and wings are fancifully chosen. This demon is brutally smacking a tortured person against the fire-spitting ground. The demons take charge of the dead, who are evidently being led off to hell!

All creatures and scenes shown on this fragment are illustrating the insanity reigning in the devilish hell, a huge chaos rules the world of the sinners and traitors and nobody is safe! The creatures appear as fusions and metamorphosed mutants, all shapes and forms are mingling, all colors and kinds are melting to creatures which take quite a while for our minds to process! The fashion creations in our current world are not far from this, they are wicked and weird, they are materialistic and abundant, exaggerated and extreme. Imagine if eventually, Bosch was just a visionary fortune teller, he might have had some sort of magical crystal ball streaming him live imagery from London or Paris catwalks and runways, providing him with endless inspiration for these Babylonian sceneries!? Or maybe he was able to peek through a future-curtain directly into the studios of the big fashion houses, he could see the poor tortured souls of the interns being maltreated by eccentrically dressed fashion fanatics! We will never know exactly how Bosch’s creatures were conceptualized, but don’t you believe my fashion-visionary theory to not be too far from reality? 

text & image selection: Federico Protto

image sources:  The Last Judgement (fragment), by Hieronymus Bosch: boschproject.org Polyphonic of the Last Judgment by Rogier van der Weyden: artbible.info First Bosch detail: pinterest.de Other two Bosch details: boschproject.org All runway images: vogue.com

#fashion & _______ #fashion & catastrophe #catastrophe #fashion #hieronymous bosch #hyeronimus bosch #rogier van der weyden #art theory #federico protto #alexander mcqueen #charles jeffrey loverboy #charles jeffrey #jw anderson #craig green #jacquemus #vivienne westwood #federicoprotto

[geniuscloud]

Bad Liar- Chapter Six (JB GOT7)

Sorry this chapter is kinda short, I just really wanted to post something since it’s been SO LONG! The series is coming to a close within the next few chapters here, but i’ll try my hardest to make sure the series doesn’t take forever to end. Next week I have a bunch of days off, so i’ll be working on more stories and requests soon!

A/N: HOLY SHIT I JUST LOOKED THE LAST TIME I POSTED (CHAPTER FIVE) AND IT WAS IN SEPTEMBER. I’M SO SORRY.

______________

Genre: Fluff, Angst, and a little suggestive.

Jaebum/JB (GOT7) X Original Character

Collage/University AU

Warnings: Swearing. May cause slight heart break, and rage towards characters.

May contain: Brief mentions of BTS members.

I stood there stunned, trying to register what Amie had just said.  

“He what?”  

“Don’t you make me repeat what I said, are you deaf or something?!”

“No, I just can’t believe he did that…” I mumbled.

“So now what, are you going to smirk and rub it in my face?”

“You’re my friend, why the fuck would I do that?!”

“Friend my ass. He is your ex-boyfriend and maybe…”

“No, absolutely not. I will not let you paint me as the bad guy in this situation. This wasn’t my fucking fault so don’t you dare try to pin this on me. He’s my ex-boyfriend, and we were together for so long, it was probably just a mistake. I’m not after him, and I’m certainly not trying to split you up. Don’t peg me for someone with a hidden agenda, because in actuality, I’m not doing anything! I don’t know what the fuck is going on with you these past few days but, it’s like you’re becoming the villain in some shitty teen drama. I’m going to tell you this once, and one time only. I’m not here to mess with someone’s life, and if you want to accuse me of shit you’re more than welcome to leave.” I gritted my teeth trying to hold back my anger. This was not what I needed right now in my life; I had already spent time yelling at JB and now I’m yelling at my roommate.

“Am I crazy for thinking that maybe you two aren’t as innocent as you seem? I just was thinking because maybe you guys…”

“Save it. I don’t want to argue anymore, and honestly, I take back what I said… I don’t even consider you a friend at this moment. I will not be associated with someone who has so much hate in their heart. Too much time passed, and we have nothing in common. We’re completely different people, and I just hate the person you’ve become. You value people’s appearances before their personalities, and have such little trust in the people around you. Grow up.”

“You don’t know me anymore! You have no right to say what I value and what I don’t.”

“Tell me ONE thing you love about JB, that’s not his appearance.”

“Well, I like how he… Um, well you see…” She stuttered.

“Do you even love him?”

“I wouldn’t call it love just yet, but with time I can learn to love him.”

“Love isn’t something you just learn over time!” I shouted.

“Whatever, just leave me and my relationship alone; as officially from this moment on, neither of us are your concern now. We won’t talk with each other unless absolutely necessary.”

“Fine, just stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours.”

You may think that this happened too fast, and all of a sudden. Maybe I just snapped because she was accusing me of having an affair with JB, or because despite everything, I am still protective of JB. I had to remind myself that they aren’t my problem anymore, and I need to move on. This is why I shut myself in. I’m afraid of putting myself out there, and being a normal functioning human, because it makes me vulnerable, and the chances of me getting hurt are far more likely. Maybe I should just move to Australia, get a dog, and live the rest of my life far from anyone I ever knew.  

Later on, in the evening I sat across the table from Jimin in the café. A tray of sample sized black coffees were spread out, and the two of us sat sampling different blends Jimin was trying to get into the café. The store was closed, and the music he played in the background was shut off. Dimmed lights, and the smell of fresh coffee filled the air with every deep breath.  

“Thanks for sampling these with me, it’s nice to get help, and even better since you’re basically my number one customer,” Jimin smiled.

“No problem; I’m glad you invited me here because it gets me out of the hell hole that is my apartment right now.”

“Yeah, well when you told me that you were fighting with ‘thou who shall not be named’ I thought it might be good for you.”

“Ha-ha, you can say her name, it’s okay. Yeah, my fight with Amie was intense, but to be completely honest I don’t really feel bad at all. Does that make me a bad person?”

“Not at all. From what I’ve been told by you, you were actually being very mature about the situation, and I think it’s good that you stood up for yourself.”

“Hmm, I just feel like it could have gone a little better. I did kind of overreact…” I mumbled, taking a sip of another coffee sample.

“Well don’t regret it now. It’s good that you put her in her place… At least she won’t try to walk all over you anymore. Too bad you couldn’t kick her out, that would really make her crumble to her feet.”

“I mean in reality… I totally could. She lives overseas and I had to apply for the lease by myself because she wasn’t a student in time for renting a dorm. My name is the only one on the lease, so she has no rights to our room. Technically I have the whole thing to myself.” Jimin pulled away from the table laughing, his eyes wrinkling up into a smile as well. The most amazing thing about Jimin is that when he’s happy, his whole body expresses how happy he is. When he laughs, it’s like this physical reaction that just engulfs his entire body. His heart was so pure, and he was one of the most amazing men I knew. He didn’t lack in personality or looks, but I only saw him as a friend. I just wish I had the right feelings for him, so I could forget about JB, but you can’t learn to love somebody.  

“Thank you Jimin…”

“For what?”

“For being there for me, even though you know your feelings are one sided.”

“Ah, yeah… I do really like you, and I’m happy you gave me at least a chance. I’m just wise enough to know that you can’t force feelings. So, I’ll be okay, and I’m fine having you as a friend.”

“You know, you’re so mature. I wish I was as amazing as you. I could never do that with someone I liked…”

“But aren’t you doing that right now?” He questioned.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re staying beside someone you love, even if you two aren’t together.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. I rested my elbows on the table, furrowing my brow together.

“You and JB. You’re still in love with him, but you’ve still been beside him all this time. You’re protective of him because you love him. You don’t want to see him get hurt, and you think you can’t make him happy because you guys dated before, and you two didn’t have time for each other in the beginning of university. You two never actually fell out of love, nor did you two have any fights. You both just one day bowed out of a relationship that never went wrong. You guys just broke up because school was stressful and going to separate schools made it feel like long distance. Now that your schooling calmed down, you guys see each other all the time, but never got back together… which is honestly kind of puzzling to me.”

“Wha-what? That’s not true… Psssh. We had other reasons for breaking up.”

“Like?”

“Uh… Just because I can’t think of any at the moment doesn’t mean that there aren’t any reasons.”

“You’re ridiculous. I know you are mad at him for what happened today, but you need to figure things out and fast. Do you want him to marry someone like Amie?”

“Fuck no. He deserves so much better than her, even if he did hurt my feelings…”

“Then get him to change his mind, free him from the oncoming hell that is Amie,” Jimin laughed.

“I’m not going to break them up, because they probably will both accuse me of trying to ruin their lives out of spite.”

“Then show him that she’s a shitty person. Expose her for what she really is then.”

“I’m not sure if I have the energy to do that… Plus he might get hurt…”

“Wounds heal eventually; plus, it gives you the chance to repair his heart,” Jimin winked.

“You really must have not had actual feelings for me,” I laughed. I gave Jimin a gentle shove before packing up my things and getting ready to go. I had a simple plan I needed to follow. Step One; create distance between the couple, Step Two: expose her old ways, Step Three: stir up trust issues, and the final and fifth Step: break them up. This was the only way my angry mind could come up with for getting them to break up. If it doesn’t happen naturally, then it will have to happen by force. There is no way I’m letting JB go through this shit; even if he did hurt me. I brought the two together, and I can sure as hell pull them apart. You wanna accuse me of being the bad guy? I’ll be the fucking bad guy.

#Bad Liar GOT7 #jb #jb got7 #got7 #got7 jb #jaebum #Im Jaebeom #Im Jaebum #got7 scenarios #got7 fanfic #got7 reactions #mark tuan #jackson wang #park jinyoung #choi youngjae #kim yugyeom #bambam

[simplyoriginalcharacters]

Creating Visual References for Your Character

A visual reference is a picture of a person, place, or thing that an artist can refer to while drawing to ensure that they’re portraying something accurately. Often, a visual reference doesn’t represent everything in a given piece of artwork, but just one or two aspects of it; for example, an artist who is commissioned to draw someone else’s fictional character might have one reference for the character’s body type, a different reference for their hairstyle, and a third reference for their outfit - and often even more than that! While not every artist uses visual references for their work (and even those who do probably don’t use them for every single thing they draw), they can be an extremely useful creative tool…and as a writer, they can help you, too!

I often find that I struggle to describe something in words if I can’t see what it looks like first. Even if I’ve imagined it over and over again, sometimes the right words just won’t come. If you struggle with the same problem, using visual references can help you, too. They give you a picture to look at so that your brain can connect your mental image with the words to describe it. Even if you can’t draw, you can create and use visual references. Below, you’ll find a list of some of the resources I use for creating, finding, and saving visual resources to work from, and tips for how to use them.

Creating:

Dollmaker websites: I know, I know. It can be so hard to find the right skin tone or the right body type or the right whatever, because a lot of dollmaker sites default to very slender models with exaggeratedly feminine features, and there are so few out there for men. However, a dollmaker can be a good start when you’re just trying to get a feel for a new character’s style. Need ideas for how they might wear their hair or what kind of clothing they like? Maybe a dollmaker is for you! I like Azalea’s Dress-Up Dolls, Doll Divine, and Rinmaru Games.

Polyvore: Okay, so you have a pretty clear idea of your character’s style, but you just can’t find any outfits that fit their look! That’s okay, friend - Polyvore has your back. On Polyvore, you can find TONS of different pieces of clothing, hairstyles, makeup, accessories, and more, and you can use those things to create unique looks that suit your character’s style. You can save your outfits to your profile and go back to them whenever you want, and you can even automatically pin them to a Pinterest board so that they’re right there with all of your other visual references. I also use Polyvore to give me an idea of what brands or types of clothing my characters can afford; the self-made millionaire might be able to afford a $2,000 designer dress, but the college student working her way through school probably can’t afford to splurge on that. Since I have a tendency to give my characters ridiculously elaborate outfits, Polyvore makes for a useful reality check!

Video games with character customization: These days, there are a lot of games out there that allow you to decide what your character looks like. I’ve always preferred using games from the Sims franchise, but I’ve also used various MMORPGs. The upside to this is that, depending on the limitations of the game, a lot of the time you can get a character who looks exactly like what you want. The downside? Games cost money, and a lot of them have a LOT of limitations - finding curly hair, for example, might be night impossible, and a lot of so-called ethnic hairstyles aren’t executed well (or don’t exist).

Real-world pictures and projects: Sometimes you just want to get crafty, or you need something to do that doesn’t involve staring at a computer screen. I hear you. Listen, a visual reference can be just about anything you can look at that helps you with your descriptions, so if you want to draw a stick figure, make a collage out of magazine pictures, or make macaroni art of your character, you go for it. These are all valid ways of figuring out the right words to use!

Finding:

Google: The Old Faithful of finding what you’re looking for. You don’t even need to know exactly what you want: you can search for words like “short hairstyle” or “pink dress” and come up with a ton of images. Google can also help you find sites that collect images of what you’re interested in, like the ones I’ve listed at the bottom of this article. If you don’t want Pinterest results, make sure you add ‘-Pinterest’ (minus the quotes) at the end of your search to lock them out. I know they annoy some people because you can’t view them without a Pinterest account.

Pinterest: Speaking of, Pinterest really is one of the best places to find a lot of images really quickly. You can search for almost anything on Pinterest, and you’ll probably find it. You can also find infographics that can show you different varieties of the same thing. I use these a lot for things like describing the neckline of a shirt or the way a tie is knotted.

Stock photos: Yeah, I know, most of them are ridiculous…and those watermarks! But there are free stock photo sites out there - you just have to look around a little to find one you really like. The biggest downside to stock images is that when it comes to people, it can be hard to find pictures that aren’t cheesy, insulting, or just plain weird, but sometimes it can be worth the effort to check.

deviantArt (and other art sites): There are LOADS of people on dA who take pictures just for people to use as visual references, especially poses or facial expressions. Again, it can take some work figuring out exactly what to search for, and you will have to scroll through a bunch of irrelevant results, but it can really be worth it. Make sure you have safe search on, though, or you might end up seeing more than you bargained for.

Real life: You probably have a camera or a camera phone, right? Get out there and use it! Go to the mall and snap pictures of clothing your character would wear, or places you’d like to write about, or that amazing sunset you saw driving home, or whatever else you think might be useful. Take pictures of your own face to practice describing facial expressions. Get friends to act out the scene you’re trying to write, or make a gesture you’ve been struggling to capture in words, and take video. The whole world is out there, so don’t be afraid to take inspiration from it! Just be sure to ask before you take pictures of anyone, okay? It’s important to be polite!

Saving:

Pinterest: This is absolutely my favorite way to save references. If you love pictures, Pinterest may be the place for you. Make a board for your character and use it to pin facial features, hairstyles, clothing, body types, expressions, aesthetics, you name it! If you can find it in an picture, you can pin it to your Pinterest board. Just make sure you label the things you pin so that you know why you saved them - more than once I’ve pinned something and then gone back and couldn’t figure out what I wanted it for. Pinterest is great when you want to be able to see all of your visual references at a glance, or when there are a lot of them. It’s also good for people who create on the go - I have it on my phone and use it when I’m out of the house and waiting around for things to happen. I honestly can’t recommend Pinterest enough for this purpose.

Tumblr sideblogs: Use a theme that allows you to have multiple columns of posts visible and you’ll be able to see everything at once! Of course, if you want things you find elsewhere on the Internet to show up as pictures, you have to download them to your computer first and then re-post them (don’t forget to add your source!) so that they’ll show up. Honestly, that can be pretty inconvenient, so I’d say this one is best for those who find most of what they want to use as references on Tumblr.

Browser bookmarks: If you only have a few references, you might just want to bookmark them in a folder on your browser! You won’t be able to use them if you swap computers (unless you have something that synchronizes your bookmarks) but every browser out there has a bookmark feature, so you’re not required to sign up for anything or purchase anything to use it.

Download them: I kind of think of this as an “if all else fails” suggestion, like if you’re afraid that a certain image will be taken down or you can’t save it any other way. You can usually right click on an image and click “save as” to save it, or copy it into a program like Microsoft Paint and save it that way. Just make sure you know where you saved it to!

Remember, there are lots of other ways to create, find, and save visual references, so you have to find the ways that work for you. Don’t limit yourself to this list - dig around and see what you can find! I hope this serves as a good jumping-off point for you, and maybe inspires you to see what using visual references can do for your writing. Good luck!

-Kyo

#SOC Original

[clonerightsagenda]

These keep getting longer

I think it’s evident at this point that I consider my duty to the prompt filled if the words are mentioned in passing or even implied

tuesjade prompt: art supplies

Jade isn't in the greenhouse or napping in the common room (or even halfway up a tree, which is where you found her last time you went looking) so you check her bedroom, which maybe you should have done first. There she is, flat on her back and flicking pennies at the ceiling. Instead of dropping back down onto her pillow, they settle into orbit around her head like a glittering halo. When you walk in, they fall in a copper shower around her shoulders.

"Jake!” she says from beneath a pile of loose change. “Do you need something?"

"Not need, exactly." You hover at the doorway until she motions for you to come in. "It's more that I'm here to ask you something. You see, Calliope and I have been working on a comic together."

"Oh, is that what you two have been hiding away to work on? We were wondering what you were up to." She sits up and pats the bed. Stray pennies clink and shift. "Can I see it?"

"As a matter of fact, I did bring some samples along." You're a little shy, but if you can't show your fumbling attempts at artwork to your grandmother, who can you trust? Calliope took the reins for most of the first booklet anyway. "Behold!” You hold out the hand-stapled collection of pages with a flourish. “The brand new adventures of our enterprising heroes."

She pages through your first issue, complimenting the art and laughing aloud at your cornier jokes. “My grandpa used to make that exact pun, you know," she says, tapping one speech bubble you were proud of.

"That stroke of genius must be hereditary."

She smiles down at the panel for a moment before turning the page. "Guess so."

“It’s funny,” you say. “Speech bubbles feel so… constrictive, for some reason. I know it’s a function of the medium, but you just can’t fit that many words in. You’d think I’d be used to it, since I’ve read my fair share of the funnies. But I keep thinking, how can they say everything they need to? They have to be so terse. It makes for a lot of revising.”

“You’ll get it with practice,” she promises. “And then we’ll all notice you’re sending us monosyllabic texts!”

When she reaches the end, you clear your throat. "I wanted to ask if you'd like to be a guest artist. We're trying to get as many people as we can for different issues, so it can be a group project." Calliope took a while to sell you on that. Some of your friends are actual artists. Their work will make your scribbles look pitiful. Still, you saw her point in the end. These things are more fun done together. And she's promised to stab people with pencils if they laugh.

"That sounds like a lot of fun. I haven't drawn in..." She shakes her head. "I don't know. A long while! I'm not great at it, but it was a nice way to pass the time."

"Oh grandma, you're being modest. You were always the best at arts and crafts.” Once you’d gotten into some old paints and left a trail of child-sized handprints on the wall. Instead of yelling, your grandmother had handed you a brush, and the two of you had covered the plain surface with a mural of swirling colors and flowers. It was one of the things you missed most when your house exploded. “The things you could do with a magazine collage were sheer magic."

"I don't know about your version of me, but this me is no Picasso." She waves her hands, and a sketchbook appears between them. You’d expect something with glitter or drawings of flowers – Jade is no stranger to the stereotypically “girly” end of accessorizing, even with the deconstructed guts of appliances and a few odds and ends of weaponry stacked up in the corner of her room - but the leather binding is plain and worn. "Here are some things I did before the game."

You open the book to the first page and blink. You know that handwriting. “Is this… mine?”

“Oh, that’s right.” She reaches over you and turns over a big chunk of pages. “This used to be one of my grandfather’s journals. He drew schematics for inventions or sketches of wildlife he’d discovered on his explorations. Sometimes he’d take me out on an “expedition”. He’d take field notes, and I’d imitate him by trying to draw what I saw. That’s how I got started doing art, actually. After he died, I kept it up. Maybe using his book was disrespectful, but…” She shrugs, reaching a page where no more of your – your other self’s – writing is visible. “I always thought he wouldn’t mind.”  

The sketchbook feels different in your hands now that you know your alternate self once held it. Heavier. You try to put it out of your mind. You have drawings from the Jade who is right here. Her lines are thick and defined, like a child's crayon drawings. Of course, she would have been a child then. Here's a doodle of a school classroom, with Jade and Bec behind a desk. The other students... They’re not pretty, but one of them has clunky square glasses. Another wears a headband. "Are those John and Rose?"

She laughs. "Yes. They hadn't sent me pictures yet, but I'd seen them in the clouds. I liked hearing about school, even when they complained. They never understood why I pestered them for so many details, but I wanted to imagine myself going too. Maybe they’re right and I wouldn’t have liked it, but I hated having to wait until they came home to tell them something."

Her human faces are clumsy and cartoonish, but she has an eye for rendering detailed objects in perspective. Students like flat paper dolls sit behind three-dimensional desks. "You could be an architect," you say.

"I had a Pictionary modus, so I had to be accurate," she explains. "I was never as good at people. I didn't have anyone to practice with."

You nod, flipping further. "Going off a picture just isn't the same." Here's something different. She's drawn a figure fast asleep. The lines are sketchier and more uncertain, with a realistic softness the other drawings are missing. This time, you’re confident assessing their identity. “You drew John?”

"I tried to get a good look at him while I was dreaming on Prospit," she says. "Then I drew him from memory afterward. I thought about asking him to pose a few times once we were on the battleship, but I couldn't think of a way to ask that wouldn't sound silly."

"So you resorted to candids, did you?" The last few pages of the sketchbook are populated with quick doodles built from lighter lines. The jointed fingers of a carapacian. John with his long windsock hood, gesturing broadly with his hands. Dave, no, it would be Davesprite, hiding a half-smile with one hand. An echidna curled in a tight ball with its tongue poking out. It would set your behind ablaze to say any of them are photorealistic, but you can tell what they're supposed to be.

After those you find renderings of the innards of the battleship, a mess of interlocking pipes and conduits. Now these you'd believe were ripped out of a user's manual. The rest of the pages are blank. "Did they catch on?"

She snatches the sketchbook back. "No, they don't know about it, so don't show them."

"Have you been sketching me at all?" You strike a pose, lifting your chin in the air. "How’s my profile?"

"Stop teasing, I haven't drawn anything in years." The book vanishes, and she puts her hands on her hips. "So you see, I'm not sure I'd be very good at it."

"I'm much worse than you, and I'm one of our lead storyboarders. Calliope insisted she wasn't doing all the visual components. Apparently I'm supposed to "learn" and "grow"." You tug at her elbow until she drops her arms. "Don't you want to learn and grow, Jade? Isn't that what you Space players are all for?"

She puffs out her cheeks. "Fiiiine. I guess I can pick up some colored pencils again."

"There's just one thing..." Oh rats, you hadn't thought of how this would come across. "Our guest artists... policy is that they do the villains. To keep the heroes consistent and all that. Is that ok?" You hurry on. "You could be a werewolf, or a mad professor who gets turned into some creature after exposure to magical radiation. You know, something fun."

She blows her cheeks back out. "Radiation sickness isn't much fun. I might prefer a well-intentioned extremist. Maybe I destroy corporations for harming the environment."

"But..." You hesitate. "Is that a heroic thing to do, when you boil it down? Greater good, and all that. It might be more of an anti-hero occupation, so to speak."

"Not when you're hurting the employees."

"We could convince you to let them go first... No." You shake your head. "It doesn't fit our profile to become anarchists. We'll have to save that for our gritty reboot in a few decades."

"I'll go with something more ethically simple."

"So it's ok with you?"

She pats your hand. "I'm not going to get offended about it. I know I was the bad guy for a while. Pretending to do it again won't hurt me."

"I know I wouldn't want to relive it."

"It was different for you.” She looks down at her hands, and you wonder if she’s remembering them ashen gray. “I didn't have a bunch of people living in my head. After the first moment, it was just me, the worst bits. It's not like you wanted to rip anybody's heart out."

You shudder. Caliborn had shoved you to the back of your mind, where you kept company with a bunch of silly green men and a spooky clown, but you'd caught flashes of the outside world. He was happy leaving you to feel your body's pain. Human hands weren't meant to take that kind of punishment, but the vision-blurring impact hadn't prevented you from seeing one of your best friends die. "Can we talk about something more cheerful?"

Her ears pull back slightly. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"And here I was worried about upsetting *you*.” You laugh. “I guess we know which of us is made of sterner stuff."

"You're pretty tough," she says, poking you in the shoulder. "You're our adventure guy."

"Mostly in comics. My alter ego is much braver than I ever was."

She shakes her head. "They're just made up. You're the real deal. And you made it through the worst a bored comic book writer could ever throw at you."

You tap the cover of your comic book thoughtfully. "We *are* the grittier reboot."

She laughs. “That’s right. We are! So now you can enjoy your… less gritty reboot, if that’s a thing comics do.”

“We could have a beach episode.”

“Name a day, and I’ll take us back over to the island. We’ll make a vacation out of it.”

How will it feel to revisit the place where you grew up? Will it feel like coming home, or more like visiting an old prison cell? Which memories win out – the fond ones or the terrible ones? At least you’d have your grandmother at your side. Maybe that way you won’t keep expecting her to pop out from behind every tree and boulder. “There’s an idea. Your character could be a Captain Nemo type. He had a mysterious island and everything.”

“I have in the past piloted something somewhat like a cool submarine,” she agrees.

“Let’s doodle you a nifty uniform,” you say, and she grins and picks up a pen.

#tuesjade #homestuck/ #kat writes fic #they'll get shorter as my list leads me to characters i'm not as familiar with #or... will my lack of confidence w/ their voices make me lean on narration #thus generating more words? #i will have to analyze the data as it is created

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 45

I had decided that winter break that I had no interest in staying in Kendrick High School any longer. My time in Kendrick was over, and that was it. Zack was gone, I hated the sight of everything and most everyone around me, I felt I was missing out on life everyday. I wasn't the same person I had been, and my ticket to getting away from my father didn't involve staying in Kendrick high school. My classmates meant nothing to me. I liked my Science teacher, and did well in his class, but that was no reason to stay in school and besides he was moving to work at a better school himself. I was still going to try in school for the remainder of time, but as I saw it, there was no way I was going to become a rock star (of sorts) if I wasted and decayed for three more years. Those three years would be better spent practicing and making art. Even if I had to get a part time job, I was willing to go for it rather than straggle along as I had been. This wasn't working out for me at all, and I felt like I was at a point where I understood that and if I cared anything about myself at all, should leave. But I didn't quite want to drop out either. I was always a little jealous of Ava's new school. She seemed to have a lot of cool hippie friends, punk friends and the like. I had never had friends like that really. While we were wearing away in the middle of nowhere Kendrick. I wanted to meet cool people. The way I saw it, that might be a good way to start a band. If I made friends that had similar interests, perhaps we could start a band. I had a lot of ideas and aspirations about this. I became inspired to leave. I wanted to go to the Lewiston High School (45 miles away) next year to see if I could get something from it.

And in the winter of 2004 – 2005, I was always sick with cold-flu like symptoms. I am guessing that I caught about five colds in a row that winter. It didn't help walking to school in the cold air, which would hurt my lungs and my nose. Sarah, naturally was sick all the time as well, us having both caught it from the moist school air and from one another. There was absolutely no way to not breath other people's air in the crammed hallways, it didn't matter if you washed your hands. Everyone got sick. The scent was sort of fowl, a mixture of sweat, bubble gum perfume, bad breath and whatever goop they were making in the cafeteria kitchen all moistening the air to make this soupy school air that I look back on with such disdain. Since we were both sick all the time, I would stay over at her house anyway. I didn't ever want to be home if I could possibly help it, and I figured the damage was done. It was terribly unpleasant and honestly, it might have been more reasonable for me to just have gone home to get better, but home was not where I wanted to be. Sarah would always wake up to the slightest movement, so I had to stay perfectly still, making sure not to wake her up on her bed even by moving my own head at times. But as I laid there, I would be choking and having troubles dealing with all the flem and such that comes with having a horrible cold. We both were feverish and sleeping was horrible. And she would be awake anyway. It was gross.

We thought a lot together about how we were going to get out of Kendrick. I was twenty-four seven adamant and inspired and obsessed with anything involving goals. It became a sort of obsession of ours, but especially me. However, Sarah had the capacity to make our leaving possible, as she had taken driver's ed and I had not. Sarah's mom was going to let Sarah have her blue 1979 Honda Civic to drive as her first vehicle that coming summer. It made good mileage, and though it wasn't a terribly good car, it would certainly work for what we needed it for. Sarah would drive naturally, as I still had no real idea how to drive. And Sarah would have her license by that summer. Now, all we had to do was find a way to get gas money, or at least have some idea on how we were going to pay for our trips to and fro from home and back everyday. I had saved up money for the last two years, spending money only on Christmas presents, and though I didn't quite have enough, I felt that it would be a good start. Sarah's mom agreed to pay some of the gas money.

One way that we considered was trying to sell some of our belongings at a city yardsale over in Lewiston. Sarah's mom had bought a booth, and tended to do this yardsale event every year. It would take place in this enormous building with a bunch of other vendors. It would be a bit like a flea market in a sense.

I didn't have many things, and Sarah's items took up the majority of what could be sold as we learned over the next month sorting out our disposable items. I mostly picked out a few scarves and bags I no longer wanted. My pickings were slim, truth be told. I grabbed some of my loose Eminem items that I no longer cared for, a franchise and a favorite that I no longer had much investment in. It was a pretty weak selection really. Sarah had a major video game selection she didn't want. On the night before the city yardsale over in Lewiston, Sarah and I were both sick as dogs. Neither her nor I could breath right, our noses were leaking, but so stuffed up at the same time that it caused intense headaches. I couldn't even talk as my voice was gone – I couldn't even cough. We both had fevers. My skin hurt and I was almost nauseated. And yet, we had to make that money to get out of Kendrick, no matter how we felt. So I pushed through it in some kind of fowl haze. There was nothing we could do to stop this. So we got up early in the morning, deliriously put on our clothes, packed our stuff to Sarah's mom's red pick up, and got on down the road listening to Queen's Greatest Hits.

That day was long and terrible. Perhaps one of the longest and more terrible days I have had. We didn't make very much money in the end. I was never sure what I made, since my items weren't labeled and Carol sold the stuff not sure who's was who's. I managed to buy this disturbing peach mask with holes for eyes and the mouth. The man who sold it to me only ask a dollar for it, I liked it so much and he was so unlikely to have sold it otherwise. He gave me an odd look, as it would take a very strange person to really want something like that. I still have that creepy mask to this day. It has been dragged around for quite a long time now.

There were many points in the day where I wanted nothing more than to sit, but there were no decent places to sit. I could barely engage in the busy world around me. I had no money for food. Sarah and I felt like zombies. Eventually, I left the building into the frigid cold air, and laid down on the cold cement outside. Even though the cold air was torture to my throat, I just laid there anyway, too tired to continue standing and walking around as I had been doing it for six hours straight. If I stood up any longer I feared I would pass out. Sarah came to sit by me. For some reason, I remember Carol was annoyed at us if we left the booth, but there was no use for us, and I don't quite remember what the problem was. I think it is quite likely that both Sarah and I, being as we were fifteen, might sometimes have done things that were rude unknowingly. That is one explanation. Or it could just be that Carol was slightly annoyed anyway as adults generally and mysteriously are at times, and we were just there to be annoyed at. In any case, it was all a million miles away from me.

Sarah eventually convinced me to come back into the building – for her sake as her mom was going to annoyed with us. As I weakly scraped myself up off the ground, shaking and wheezing, a jovial man and a woman in their early thirties came up to us with two big boxes. In the boxes was just about every Seventeen Magazine from the 90's. They wanted us both to take them with us, for free. At first I refused, but then later thought better of it. Sarah and both eventually split them, and for the next five years of my life, I carted around those Seventeens, clipping things out of them to put into collages, and occasionally reading some of the articles and admiring some of the 90's fashion in them. Eventually Sarah gave me her half as well. I ended up having a knack for postmodern collage art later on.

I didn't feel like I was in school anymore, even while I was in school. The walls of the school were now an illusion. I wasn't happy in class by any means, but I knew my mind was now stronger than the school and I could no longer be dragged down as I had been. I found this to be an enormous relief, and it was a true first for me, after eleven years of psychological warfare. There was a sort of stress I had carried along with me all through grade school that always made me sick inside when I saw all the people and meaningless rules and empty rituals that everyone had always done so well at, and I had always failed. I didn't have the energy to care any longer, rules didn't matter anymore, people's opinions didn't matter anymore. I didn't have to defy their opinions as much as I just didn't acknowledge their existence to begin with. They just simply didn't exist in my life. I followed a new path now. There was no more reason for me to go to the school. The faces of people like Kyle just seemed more or less like empty soulless blurry faces with no meaning behind the eyes.

My back had gotten kind of screwed up over the years on the count that, despite the fact that I never did my homework at all, I did always take all of it home with my everyday with this insane thought that maybe that night I would miraculously find the something I never had and pull those books out and do the work, marching up and down the hill with fifty pounds strapped to my back had killed my back, all of my books pouring out, books in my arms day after day, week after week, and year after year. I was starting to have this permanent dull ache in my back at all times, but in a strange way, I internalized that in some manner I must deserve this pain. After I made this shift and became my own boss and wanted to steer my own destiny, the shame disappeared and I stopped bringing the books home with me. I think I was starting to live as I was, and not as people wished I was.  And that me didn't have a lot of room for any of this waste anymore. And it was strange, but when I stopped even pretending that I was going to do my homework, I actually started doing even better in school. The shame that was used against me all those years had actually made me a worse student, when I am assuming most adults were pushing it on me so I would conform.

Sometimes, I would just walk out of class to use the bathroom without asking any teachers. This was against the rules. I didn't ask, and I chose not to broadcast guilt or feel overly ashamed of it as I walked out. If office people tried to stop me I disregarded them entirely. I didn't see the need in a law that said that I had to ask before I went – something so stupidly basic to everyone's existence that I couldn't believe how dumb and trained they wanted us all to become, so I disregarded the rule entirely, and I left for the stalls whenever I preferred. And most of the time, teachers didn't stop me. I just had that look in my eye. I was fed up with school in the same way that Bill Murray was fed up with Groundhog's Day.  All I cared about was David Bowie and Queen, being a musician, and transforming into whatever it was that was growing inside me. I was a new being, shedding the old self.

I once got the song 'Don't Stop Me Now' stuck in my head so loud during class, and I felt the song so strongly that I got out of my desk and began dancing down the hallway.  The kids and the teachers looked at me. They tried to call me back, but I didn't care. The teacher, our health instructor Mrs. Spencer, was a pretty lenient woman actually, and that might have been part of it. She didn't get paid much but was married to a nice rich man, was open about the fact that she wasn't getting paid enough to put in the effort, and felt that she only needed to do the work that she was getting paid to do rather than stress about trying to control a classroom, so classes were pretty light concerning what I ever actually learned in her class. Health was highly underfunded in what she could realistically teach, so she just had us look at the food pyramid, watch 80's and 90's anti-drug and sex ed videos occasionally which were hilarious, and sometimes take walks to the park on a nice day. She never got angry or raised her voice, and was always straight forward and placid in every situation. You could say just about anything to her, and she would just calmly laugh without losing any composure. She might have been one of the first well rounded adults I had ever met. And she was an open atheist. She was the first adult I had ever met who was calmly just that. I had gotten in a lot of religious people's faces, but it wasn't without some provocation. I don't know how many times I was told that I was going to hell or that I needed to be prayed for. It just got irritating and condescending after awhile.

I think people noticed that I was a lot different, or at least they seemed to, because a rumor floated around that I was now a heroin junkie. Some of this was my own fault. At some point I had written the word HEROIN on a desk and I got sent to the office for that. I had to explain to the school, once more, that I was not doing heavy drugs – or any drugs. My father tried to get mad at me, but even he knew that the notion of me being a junkie was wholly unrealistic in every sense.

In Speech class, we were all supposed to debate certain topics that were voted on by the class majority (excluding abortion or 'is there a god'), and the girls in the class decided to vote on this impossible stance of 'Should convicted rapists and child molesters get life in prison'. I was supposed to argue against this point, and that was – obviously a serious challenge. Honestly, I didn't think it was a very appropriate subject to be questioning really. I might be able to talk about statistics more and come up with some kind now – kinda. I suggested the death penalty, but for whatever reason the Speech teacher told me that that would not be an acceptable stance for me to take. So basically, I just had to try to justify small sentences. For whatever reason even further, my speech teach was fine with me suggesting snipping men's junk when they molest children – something I also didn't believe in, but it seemed a little better than suggesting five years or something petty.

I really did as much research as I could at the time. I wasn't good at research at that time, and to my credit, the rural school of Kendrick didn't teach students how to do research so I was kind of at a loss. However, when the time came, Sarah and I got in front of the class, and I argued the futile argument that serial rapists and molester sickos needed to lose their dicks and get smaller sentences. I was able to explain that the prison system was actually a huge money hog. And like I said, I could come up with some more reasons now, very flawed reasons naturally, but more no less. And considering how impossible my case was, I did extremely well at debate. It helped a lot that I didn't care anymore. My classmates who had otherwise come to know me as a slacker and a introverted straight F loser were even impressed by my skills in debating my case. After a half hour debate, I lost naturally, but many people came up to me individually and congratulated me afterwards on my technical prowess in the act of building a case and articulating and defending my point and counter points. People were genuinely impressed with me when it came to my language and my ability to persuade others if I had to.

This might have been a strength I was proud of in myself, having spent most of my life being somewhat of a mousy victim to whomever. My father could yell, but I had the power of cutting to the heart of things and finding the truth. This gave me an edge over him, that made me feel better even though it wouldn't make a difference to him at all. The ability to debate and have molded opinions based on truth values gave me a sort of confidence in myself. But when I looked at Sarah's art, or her ability to just play and sing a song on guitar, or how she had a perfect figure and I was heavy, I would have given it all up in a heartbeat to have that instead. The things I was good at weren't really very soft or flattering to most people. I was just essentially good at questioning things. And it was making me a little mentally unhinged, always feeling like I had something to prove. Having to work twice as hard to be taken seriously in a fundamental human way. My moods were all over the place. One moment I would feel really like I was a very unique and special person – sometimes I felt like dancing to Under Pressure, and then the next I would feel nothing but gross and ashamed of myself, saw myself as everything my father had ever yelled at me, and I felt like a worthless failure with no control over my own life and I would have the urge to hang myself. There seemed to be no in between and it and came to be very stressful and hard to balance these extremes. So even though I was no longer engaging with mindless societal expectations, I was still very much at war with my own expectations. And I couldn't help but continue to tirelessly compare myself to Sarah. I just wanted to disappear.

Confronting Sarah about it, I found that she seemed to retreat in a way whenever I talked about my feelings, and this made me mad. She would cave to everything I say. When I asked her to see me as an equal, she very often just repeated back to me what I just said. I found this annoying. I wanted a friend that was going to be there for me. If I criticized her at all, she just told me she wasn't a very strong or good person and that I deserved better. In many ways, she jumped to that answer emotionally due to a vacant lack of self worth that she had, much different than mine, but something that hindered her ability to really be present in the world or want to make any kind of real difference. This always upset me further because I wanted a friend, and not a follower. And it sometimes felt like she was giving up the friendship by passively walking away from me. Of course, I was also abnormally unstable. And she was abnormally distant. I was also getting mad because she didn't seem as excited about being in a band as I was. I wanted it, and needed it, and Sarah used it as a dream to get through the day. She didn't want to think about the future. She just wanted to sleep all day and eat fudgsicles, listen to CKY and use our ideas of being musicians as a fantasy. I felt like I was always making all the plans, but due to my lack of charisma and charm, I couldn't meet new people and got nervous and defensive too readily. Sarah in a sense had never had any real failures at life. She had a few setbacks, but she had never been rejected as I had. She had witnessed it to a degree with me, but I don't believe she ever really understood what that felt like for me. By fifteen I was already somewhat emotionally damaged. So people liked her. And like I said, she was lovely, and naturally gifted. I had to work very hard to have half of what she had.

So we started to fight about this subtle problem between us. It started to become a pattern of sorts. I would write angry letters in my bold tiny handwriting, often times filling up the entire page of a line sheet in even the white areas, putting two lines of words in a space meant for one, and using the fronts and backs. I would write these eleven page notes to her all the time, my mind racing with self hatred and anger. I would sob as I wrote them, and found that I was certain that our friendship couldn't last. Some of it was that my mind was very good at figuring out very subtle hints of things and exploding them into bigger issues very rapidly, which would become a mapped out mosaic of connected thoughts and concepts. And the other half was that I was insecure and self loathing and jealous of her. It would have been very hard for anyone to defend themselves when I attacked them with my notes, let alone Sarah.

Sarah did personally like who I was somehow though, despite how difficult I was. She was the only person who was around who did like me. This almost made it harder for me to reject her outright. She told me once when I got jealous of something she drew that she admired me because I really seemed to have a passion and a sense of care for everything I did. I really tried. So even when I failed, it was a failure that I felt. She admitted to me that she didn't try on anything she ever did. She half assed most of what she did. It just happened, and most of the time what she put out in the world was shallow bullshit that people would eat up mindlessly and she knew that, but had no personal value to her. She lacked mental clarity and she didn't feel like she had anything to convey to anyone and nobody could see through it – except me. Perhaps even with all the problems we have, me recognizing that there was something wrong with her thinking even then gave her a feeling of mattering to someone or having validation in a world who otherwise superficially had her pegged as the cool 'Juno' type (Juno hadn't come out yet, but that was how people saw her), without recognizing who she was or that she had any real flaws. It was a small consolation, and I would now argue that her expression of self was valid regardless of how it felt to her personally, but it helped me to hear it from her in this way anyway. Besides, a lot of her art talent had happened from countless hours spent alone drawing and shadowing her artwork while I had been spending more time with Ava or ogling over Zack the previous year and a half. She earned much of her talent. And some of my lack of development was my own fault.

Still, I took absolutely everything personal. Ms. Fiske, our art teacher had something against me, but seemed to have a small crush on Sarah. It might have helped had I had some encouragement from the art teacher, but she really was all about putting Sarah on a pedestal. Even though I didn't like Ms. Fiske that well, it really hurt when she would see a picture on the table that I had done, and she would shower Sarah with approval for her talent, but when Sarah told her it was I who had done the piece, she would take a step back and walk away awkwardly. In her mind, I was scum for the most part like how most people saw me, and to think that I could create something she might enjoy was something that caused her to have cognitive dissonance concerning how she saw me as a person and she liked me even less for it.

I ended up giving Ms. Fiske my little kid's guitar. My father bought me a real acoustic guitar he bought in a shop and the tiny one for grade school students was too silly and small for me. However, I knew Ms. Fiske would like it, so we went up to her doorstep and left it there. When she found it, she thanked Sarah. When Sarah told her it was me, she glared off, and then got this crazy look on her face of denial, and thanked Sarah again. This should have been a silly example of Ms. Fiske's issues, but in many ways, the world's bias for Sarah, however shallow and silly, only confirmed the inner voices in my head that told me that I was ruined and that I should go kill myself. I remember getting upset and crying.

Ms. Fiske was a super lame teach though – despite her art degree and her liberal title, she really was very conservative in everyday life. She always threw out my clay creations because she didn't like them. She didn't like things that weren't vases for the most part. I started working on these two clay people – a man and a woman. They were both naked, and the man had an erect penis. I didn't know at the time that men's penises changed size for the occasion. I really believed that men had to really fight to hide erections at all time, and I was very good at just never ever looking. I thought perhaps they hid them in their pant legs. I worked on them in class for a week, perfecting and smoothing out their bodies and faces and hair, and then put them aside for the next day. Ms. Fiske ended up finding them. She put them in front of the class, talked about how talentless and base and disgusting these figurines were. She challenged whoever had made them to step up, and claimed that whoever had done so deserved to be expelled for their disgusting twisted and perverted mind, someone who would never be a good artist and didn't take art seriously. It was a bit much, and I didn't speak up. I watched in sadness as she squashed my Adam and Eve back into balls of clay. I never tried to make anything out of clay again.

Sarah also got more credit than me in English. Our English teacher wanted us to write short stories that used a lot of similes and metaphors and personifications, to prove we knew the difference. I got inspired to write a story of a person who was running away. I didn't do a grand job, and the story was a little campy I admit, but I did put in more effort than normal. Sarah didn't have any ideas on what she wanted to do so she just copied my idea, only adding onto the same character I had created and made them do some things I didn't have in mind. I told her it would be fine. The English teacher, when she graded both of our papers, accused me of copying Sarah. It was just her automatic assumption since she almost seemed annoyed when I did do my homework. It just didn't fit in with people's schema about me. I was at this point, not allowed to succeed. Sarah was the gleaming emerald of a person – even though she wasn't popular in the traditional sense, and I was but a common stone – and an ugly jagged one at that. She gave me a C- and Sarah an A. Even though I had done everything I was supposed to. She told Sarah she just liked the story better that Sarah had written. All the while, I just felt like it had been my creation.

It was really difficult waiting for the rest of the year to pass so I could go to a new school and finally be done with all of this for good. I would occasionally see Zack drive through town on the weekends, but he was usually with a gaggle of druggy mechanic hicks, and he rarely stopped. He always waved and his eyes would twinkle when he saw me. I could almost see a sort of feeling wash over the car he was driving in as it sped off into the distance. I had the sense that he still cared a great deal about me. But he wasn't going to make much of an effort. My goal was that someday, when he was a successful musician as I assumed he would be given he was the most talented musician in the area, and when I was someday in a band of my own, perhaps I would be ready then, or worthy then of him. He had promised me that he would come back for me the previous year. When that happened, we would escape. We would psychologically escape to where 'they' could never get us. The lack of clarity is very hard to explain. Most of the acceptance and understanding I felt about this notion came from a very subconscious place. It manifested itself in my life much like a religion, the one thing I had to hold onto.

In school, I witnessed racism first hand for the first time. There had never really been a lot of dark skinned kids in our school. It was an incredibly white community I grew up in. But one day our English teacher had gotten sick for a day and her replacement was this black teacher – I think he went by Mr. G. He was elderly, and very nice. And honestly, as much as it pains me to admit this, it was shocking for me to see someone who wasn't white. It's not like I had any cruel or negative intentions, but I was able to study my own feelings and I noticed my own nervousness in his presence, which I knew even then was wrong and silly. I hadn't realized this about myself before since there was never anyone in my life who was dark skinned. Still, it was there and my reaction was noticeable. Rather than pretend I wasn't off, I acknowledged it and tried to study it.

The rest of the class however, was even worse and this became a bigger focus. The pile of stupid disgusting Larry the Cable Guy loving white little fuckhead male jocks all crowded their desks together in a near circle. They were so nervous they couldn't even stay still. Their faces were flushed red unable to control the psychological outflow of anxiety and racist ideas. Whenever the black substitute teacher said anything to us at all, however mundane, the boys would start trying not to laugh like the very notion that a teacher could be black was too much for them to handle. They began loud whispering racist jokes, and it was so disgusting I just wanted to get out of there. I knew that my nervousness in the situation was wrong as it was, but they were horrible, and I hated them. Honestly, what a worthless lot of people. You could actually just hear everything they were huddled around saying. Their racism was not even discreet. You could hear the racist terms they deserved to get their faces pounded in for. The substitute knew they were being racist too and his response amazed me. He looked at them with this placid sense of knowing. It didn't phase him. Did black people in our country – which I had foolishly thought was more or less done with the days of racism (bad education at work) really deal with so much of this that to them it was something they just expected by default?

The hall monitor/detention lady who I had grown to know very well over my time in Kendrick (I believe I explained who she was back when I was writing about 7th grade) Mrs. Fligger had a brain tumor. For the last year and a half, she had become more and more stingy and strange. At random, she would give detentions now that made no sense whatsoever. People would complain to the faculty about her strange behavior and her delusions, but I think the principal and office people felt bad about firing her, and just told the upset students and parents to suck it up and do their time. She would accuse people of cussing. I got a few detentions for running and cussing, and nothing of the sort had happened. There were many times where she would see me walking, and demand I go back and 'walk this time'. I hadn't ran at all, and I would go back, and walk, only to be given yet another detention and made to walk again. Eventually, I realized that something was wrong and I just began to ignore her.

What ended up happening, is she started to scream at teachers and commanding them to stop running as well. It was sad really. Even though she was by far, one of my least favorite people, I believe what little control she had left in this world was her ability to go about and dish out detentions to whomever, and she was holding onto that power to the point of psychological delusion. I also imagine having a tumor growing in her head was surely not helping, and probably partially if not entirely the cause of her behaviors. She was losing the battle to cancer. One day, parents tried to come into the school to talk to the office, and she commanded them to walk rather than run. She would not let them into the school unless they did what she said. She gave them detentions – even though they were obviously not students at all. They ended up not being able to get past her, and the school let her go that day. She stayed the rest of the day however, and continued to mindlessly dish out detentions to whomever. I remember her grand leave. It was lunch time, and we were all just eating lunch. She looked down at where everyone's feet were in their chairs, and she started giving out massive detentions to everyone because their feet weren't 'in the right place somehow. Eventually, nobody listened to her – didn't know how to even if they had wanted to, and many of the kids were starting to call back at her to go away already and to resign, that everyone was tired of her. I watched the high school rebellion against her and I saw something kind of break in her face a little, like she lost. Like she had given up in some deep and final way, not on the people in the room, but on life itself. She told us all that she hated us, and then she grabbed her bag and her 80's style windbreaker, and she trudged out the door and drove away. I never saw her again.

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