#im contend with this. im contend with this. im contend with this. i do not dislike my work. i am proud of my work. help.

[daftpatience]

Hi, I used to draw a lot but I've not drawn/created for a long time now, any tips to get back into it?

Or rather the whole thing about making art for yourself, I used to get a lot of attention for being good at art from other ppl and I'm not sure how to connect it back to myself again

I'm also contending with the Autism "It needs to be done in this way" and the ADHD "I can't focus for shit"

Also please don't worry if you don't know what to say, I'm just trying to get a variety of opinions to try and untangle my brain

Thank you in advance 💕

i think a good way to get back into creating *for yourself* whether its to come out of a dry spell or just to get back to creating things that you like, is what i call 'backtracking' (bearing in mind that my particular methods may only work for me! im lucky ive never struggled with focus when it comes to drawing things, but maybe some of these things will help as my main goal when drawing is to entertain myself!)

also before i move on this i think is valuable: you gotta draw things that you aren't gonna post sometimes. it's fun and fulfilling to make art for an audience, and wanting attention is not shameful (ITS HUMAN!) but also we live in panopticon times and i think its good to train your "i am alone doing something for myself and no one has to see it" muscles.

backtracking is a couple different things:

look back to when you were really young. what kinds of drawings were the most fun to do? what did you spend time on or get really into? for me, this was a few things! tracing cartoons, drawing up elaborate scenes of lots of little creatures doing a thing, and designing little characters as paper dolls and making their houses and little furniture and accessories and such to cut out and play with. also getting paint all over my hands (i still paint my whole hand whenever im done doing something with acrylics before i wash up! its stimming)! backtracking here is when you try to take those things and make use of them now. try to find that old joy and use it in a way that makes you happy today, even if it's something small or silly or embarrassing. it can really help you rediscover what parts of art make YOU happy!

if you're regularly drawing and in a slump, backtracking for me is stepping back and doing either more exercises and practising the things you feel like you already know how to draw (ie. studying angles of the face or pulling up imgs of rooms on pinterest to see how normal people arrange furniture etc.), or simplifying your drawings to a level that feels more relaxing and less stressful. (ie. chibis instead of more detailed characters etc.) i find i kind of fall back to chibis when i feel lost, and then sort of rebuild from there. its fun to let my style change as i grow!

ALSO! im telling your autism this for your adhd's sake (this is useful for anyone i think): if there is a part of art that you do not enjoy doing or find boring but you feel it is an important or necessary step in the process? the secret is it isnt! art is made up. if you hate lining, dont do it! if youre a digital artist and get caught up picking a brush every time because you feel like you need the perfect one? switch to mspaint for a bit to get the nerves out. it can be really freeing!

art is for having fun and fulfilling our need to create. the rules are all made up and not real. perfectionism is the little death that something something i forget. yeah

#hope that helps! #art advice #sorry its a lot of text

[fox-mulder-gets-pegged]

Been spending my time lately thinking of a House MD au where, through a series of accidents and lies and a bet he didn't rly intend to win, House ends up as a registered foster parent (he's still addicted to Vicodin and his normal dickish workaholic self but for some reason he cleared the requirements and trust me he's as stunned and mildly concerned as everyone else is).

Through further Shenanigans™, he ends up accidentally getting handed fostership of not one, not two, but three hellish but brilliant kids:

1. This total smartass 16 year old named Robert Chase who yeah he's a bitchy teenaged boy and a former rich kid and Australian with enough mommy and daddy issues to reawaken Freud after his dad dipped and absconded all parental rights and his mom drank herself to death, but he's also got a nice car left over from his rich kid days and an eye for detail and weirdly enough his best friend/mortal enemy (some other teen named Eric Foreman) and his on again off again girlfriend (Allison Cameron, totally won't last if u ask House) both work at the hospital as a candy striper and after school in the cafeteria respectively so House can get all the inside gossip from Chase. Plus Chase has no problems breaking and entering into patient's homes which helps bc since he's not employed by the hospital Cuddy can't complain as far as House is concerned.

2. A 14 year old girl who only answers to Thirteen (House knows he could look her name up in her file but honestly it drives Chase nuts that she won't tell him her real name and that's good enough for him) and who's dad was declared unfit after the death of his wife to Huntington's devastated him. She's a total nightmare, snarky and quick witted and freakishly smart even tho she puts most of those smarts towards things like shaving Chase's entire head (eyebrows included) bc he's trying to grow a sucky teenage mustache, and trying to take House's wallet bc she keeps calling him Old Man and he informed her he's actually only 25 but the stress of fostering has aged him prematurely and she's like 95% sure that's a lie but she wants to check his license and make sure bc everyone lies. She loves tormenting Chase by telling him his best friend and/or his girlfriend is hot and asking if they're single.

And 3. This 6 year old boy named Lawrence Kutner who's weirdly cheerful considering his parents got killed in front of him. He's way too chatty and excellent at puzzles and the only morning person in the entire house and therefore frequently tries to make breakfast (he likes to be helpful and he hasn't burned the place down yet so House doesn't feel the need to stop him). Once he told House he was gonna build a Death Star in the living room and House said lol sure go ahead whatever, only to return home from work to discover Kutner called himself out from school and has a huge wooden frame made of broken furniture in the living room. House rly can't argue since he did say go ahead. Benefits of fostering a 6 year old are 1. The babes love it, 2. Free excuse to leave work early/come in late/not show up at all, and 3. Justification for buying juice boxes and Ritz crackers. The neighbor kid Taub is his go to babysitter bc his mom volunteered him forcibly and Taub is lowkey praying that babysitting Kutner could lead to an in at Princeton Plainsboro once he graduates high-school and finishes medical school (it won't, House doesn't believe in nepotism unless it benefits him).

The adventures of House and his Foster Ducklings mostly revolve around being a Found Family, but do involve frequent plots such as:

House fired his brand new fellows again (he tosses em every three or so months, he hasn't found The Right Team yet) and will sometimes bring his foster kids in, hand em doctors coats, and tell patients that they're just a bunch of medical savants here to consult yes even the 6 year old he's actually Harvard's youngest graduate ever.

House sends the kids to break into a patient's home. They refuse. House tells them the first one to find black mold or lead paint or a dead animal or whatever gets $20. They agree. Chase drops Thirteen and Kutner off at a bus stop across town and drives over himself so he can get an hour and a half head start (ultimate fuck them kids moment, however Thirteen did steal his wallet so guess who's paying for lunch and their taxi ride to the patient's house? Net loss.)

Cuddy demands House does his clinic hours. House sends his foster kids to do his clinic hours for him. Tfw you go to the free walk in clinic for a sore throat and a cough and your doctor is a 6 year old boy who keeps asking for help with spelling whilst filling out your chart.

Wilson babysits them one (1) time since House doesn't trust Chase not to throw a party or sell his foster siblings on eBay if left as the one in charge. He wakes up with a big strip of hair poorly bleached right down the middle. Chase crushed up stolen sleeping pills and mixed them into a juice box, which Kutner 'innocently' offered to Wilson. Thirteen was going to bleach and dye his whole head blue (for practice, she wants to dye her hair but she's certainly not gonna fuck up her own hair until she has the method down) but Wilson woke up pretty quickly due to years of House drugging him. Wilson has not offered to babysit again.

Anyways this is my House Foster Ducklings au which I'm thinking about actually writing. Thank u 🫡

#house md #greg house #robert chase #remy hadley #lawrence kutner #i just think Chase and Thirteen and Kutner are the most House's Actual Kids out of all the fellows #give that man three incredibly smart self reliant kids with issues™ #i do imagine a plot where House does overdose of vicodin #and the kids find him #and they're in the hospital #and House has to contend with the fact that he either has to give the kids up to better homes #or make smarter choices bc it's unfair of him to be overdosing and almost dying when he has three traumatized kids relying on him #love when there's some middle aged guy whos like 'no im not a dad' but has a gaggle of kids following him around #feel free to message me about this au

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

More silly MXTX polls to mull over for the week:

#poll #svsss #mdzs #tgcf #EDIT: JINGLES MISERABLY: I thought this was set for a week...not a day....Sigh...... #Thought about doing this just for mdzs but there are too many characters for a proper poll and im not strong enough to do a tournement. #So now its just the main duos (+anyone else who manages to be a strong contender. Freedom of expression and all) #I think its fun to put characters in scenarios! I also think its more interesting to raise the stakes. #You may imagine any situation what gets all 6 into the same room for a Mario Partio Kartio event. #The question is who is the most cringe and fail. For the humour of the situation! #and yes - as always (unless it gets rancid again) I will have a comic for the results at the end of the week <3 #This poll is a shout out to people like me who are bad at video games and suffer whenever mario kart comes out at parties. #I mean it with my whole ass that I should not be given a controller. #No I'm not trying to hide my abilities or be humble. Dont do it. #Yes I have played a *lot* of mario kart for the wii. No I'm not good.

[brother-emperors]

you know that post about how scholars talk shit about each other when they write the phrase 'one might be tempted to assume,' or however it went. the entirety of crassus scholarship is like this.

#thankfully all i do is make comics and i can do whatever i want as long as i can justify the narrative beat #otherwise id be. ough. id be tempted to write a 600 page biography on him attempting to unravel this #B.A. Marshall mentioning Rawson's article on Crassus that initially intrigued me about him and he counters her assertion #that pompey overshadowed him with the triumph in a footnote like in a way we have come full circle #everyone collectively agrees that pompey and crassus were not the rivals that a lot of people seem to think they were #so im glad that we're all shaking hands on that. and that the rivalry they did have was just. the usual kind expected from the political #scene. very fun! for narrative purposes i will continue to make them periodically bite each other #because every time someone goes 'oh yeah they were heirs to sulla' i think im going to lose my mind #it does in some ways make their repeated alliance a little unsettling tho. like. haha ha ehgh. now we have to contend with #other kinds of parallels

[unganseylike]

#jordeclan NOT included because its objectively so good. #in fact this poll was inspired by me thinking how good jordeclan is #i think most gansey ones flow nicely except bluesey the canon couple lol #sorry i gave up at end bc didnt feel like thinking about more #my judgement of mainstream was what i can remember #do carmen/hennessy even have one? #blueadam is so zero effort #im curious if there was a more popular one early on when like trb came out #i cant remember if there were other contenders for ronan/adam before pynch won out

[demadogs]

i like to mentally cast actors for hypothetical adaptations of my favorite books. for YEARS now i have been searching for the perfect simon snow. i have some baz contenders but ive never found a perfect simon. i am pleased to announce that i have FINALLY FOUND HIM…. its walker scobell. he’d be a perfect simon snow.

#he literally looks like how i imagine 5th year simon snow SO SEEING HIM WITH A SWORD FIGHTING A CHIMERA??!!! I WAS SO DISTRACTED #rn hes a baby so give it like 3 more years bc simon and baz are 18 but HED BE PERFECT #i always say i dont want the adaptation but then i cast it perfectly and now i kinda want it #but itd be SO hit or miss and id be absolutely devestated if it sucked bc this book… these characters.. they are everything to me #i read this book when i was 16 and i still think about it every day if they completely flopped the movie i wouldnt recover #im still looking for penny i do have a contender for agatha #walker scobell #carry on #snowbaz #percy jackson #simon snow #baz pitch

[httpiastri]

Paul doesn’t have a Mercedes logo on his suit anymore… And he gave away his helmet with the logo…

i hate this. i hate this SO MUCH.

like i know there was so much talk about how merc doesn’t have 2 drivers in the same category, and now kimi going to f2…. but i thought we debunked that shit 😕 but now he gave away the helmet, he’s not wearing the logo on his suit, and he doesn’t wear any other merch either…. truly a bit scary :(((

the only good thing that could come out of this is the following:

#pls my screaming meals friends you have the opportunity to do something great #and @ all other f1 teams: pick him up or else #ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ #truly just such a silly decision from merc if this is true #sorry Toto i know kimi is basically your extra son but Paul is right. there. #he performed very well and would’ve been a proper contender for the top if he hadn’t been so unlucky #smh #well im trying not to get too upset about this before anything has been confirmed or denied #cant wait to see him this weekend <3 #paul aron #Mercedes junior academy #f2 #f3

[introspectivememories]

i've decided that i dont care about max verstappen domination anymore. i am swinging back around to it being funny. by how many seconds will he be in the lead in the next race? 45? a whole minute? maybe every other car on the grid will just break down and then max can do all 50 or whatever laps by himself. ferrari will still find a way to fuck charles over.

#this is the attitude i am choosing to take. it will be funnier this way. #the ferrari bit is a joke. i am (hesitantly) optimistic about this year. #2024 charles leclerc wdc will happen. i am in church actively praying for it. #f1 #max verstappen #charles leclerc #also im taking bets now #do we think max will win all 24 races? or just like 90% (22 races)? #or like lewis hamilton will come in with a steel chair and manage to take his 8th? (<- i am actively praying for that) #or!!! logan sargeant finally gets the power of america on his side and comes in as surprise contender for the championship? #<- this has no chance of happening. i just think it'll be funny. #or!!! halfway through the season charles transforms into lightning mcqueen and he wins the last half of the races thereby causing a tie #leading the fia to call for a tiebreaker match between charles and max in texas except charles gets lost in la on the way there and i end u #finding him and we fall in love and he charms my family until the paps find him and we have to reluctantly part ways but then he wins!! #and comes home to me. (<- i have described the plot of cars. charles please come home the kids miss you.)

[smeltbracket]

SOOO WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT SEASON 4???

(love your art btw!!!)

smeltbracket found dead in this kitchen

#okay in all seriousness though i fucking loved it #hands down favorite episode was earth rake #but also contending is stockiverse and.. Bouillabaisse.. #i really love how family focused this season is. dont get me started on tervo. i love how much nicer everyone is to each other #except for them really juicing up korvo’s bitchiness in super gooblers (which i guess was meant to push jesse into her confrontation) #speaking of korvo his voice was a delight this season. just so expressive and is now up there with the rest of the casts distinct voices #i guess trying to ease back into finales that end with a season reset #and why didnt pupa change color?? #overall it was pretty fucking great. had black spots in my vision during the invisible kitchen scene #tervo this season was fucking crazy my god what are they gonna do for the valentine special #UGHHH. they really keep raising the bar every season. SOOOO GOOD #this isn’t a very In Depth discussion of my thoughts sorry i need to spend more time in this seasons nooks and crannies #ooh ohh and the replicants this season were so cute too. THEY GREW TOGETHERRR #i liked the shlorp lore and little peeks into their past too #anyways i got sidetracked yeah amazing season #I FORGOT TO MENTION THE ANIMATION #THE ANIMATION THIS SEASON WAS BONKERS DUDE. LOVED HOW FLUID IT WAS AND ALL THE FUN NEW EXPRESSIONS THE SOLARS HAD #THAT SCENE OF THEM SAYING DEENOSAUR WAS LIKE MY FAVORITE EXAMPLE #gonna keep adding as i remember things im glad they wanted to explore jesses character more #but i dont like how they jeopardized korvos character for them to get there #kinda made him backtrack his progress for the sake of that episode :/ just a really big shift i wasnt a fan of #and they didnt make him feel remorse that whole episode either he didnt even say sorry :/ #also terry was just chill with chris that whole episode? have we just moved past the hall of betrayals thing? #i guess jesse’s roast about him being sky blue really just set him off for the rest of the season #he needs to talk to someone professional #i feel like solars is a really weird blend of being umm. Emotionally episodic

[carcarrot]

#some of these are serious possibilities others. not so much . but we can dream #i would looooove if a glitter suit came back. that could be a real contender #id also go nuts if the poncho came back. but hes gotta also do the white pants . i miss you poncho boy #also considering the 2022 tour was the yellow suit and last year had the red thats why im thinking blue or turquoise this time. who know #go nuts everybody #spars #russ

[seilon]

please don’t by k.will did more for the gays back in 2012 than any boy group can possibly do with fan service and crop tops in 2024

#do young kpoppies know about please don’t by k.will. im serious do they know #I think about it a lot #it’s impossible to replicate the feeling of being gay and watching that mv in the 2010s and just getting bodyslammed by the ending. #like he really just dropped that shit in TWENTY TWELVE #kibumblabs #to this day I think that’s the most explicitly gay mv ive seen in kpop by an established artist #(ie not holland. no shade to him but he kinda built his platform on being an openly gay artist and he’s not a big industry name or anything #which makes the impact significantly different. if that makes sense. anyway.) #like think about any other example. almost all of them can be brushed off as fan service or are at least vague enough to be #up for interpretation #please don’t’s ending is nearly fucking impossible to write off as anything but explicitly gay #no fanservice involved. no vague staring in each other’s eyes. just straight up Oh He’s Not Jealous Of His Friend He’s Jealous Of His #Friend’s Fiancé. oh #like that’s the whole point. interpreting it any other way doesn’t make sense with the impact it’s purposefully supposed to make #like seriously try to say ‘he’s just sad he’s losing his friend to marriage :(‘ or something. you have to be REAL fucking stupid or #deeply in denial to make that argument let alone believe it #anyway. I appreciate this mv a lot #k.will the OG of doomed yaoi in kpop #kill me #closest contender off the top of my head is one more day by sistar #also note I am talking about mvs here not songs in general #cause if I were talking about songs in general. key’s out there pretty much writing about gay sex at this point so I mean #k.will #kpop #only adding actual tags because I want you to watch this mv if you haven’t already

[perenlop]

people with cluster b personality disorders im giving you a kiss on the head. i want to do some writing for a npd character and when you type in “writing tips for a character with npd” what do you know the first results are just “how to write the worst fucking person ever”

#admittedly its for a headcanon not a specific oc (yet. nothings coming to me rn) #i mean with how nasty of a rep they get i wasnt expecting too much good faith tips but. yeah #im thinking about magolor and i thiiiink with my backstory for him and his deal hes actually a pretty good contender for npd #(NOT to villainize him. i mean yeah hes an antagonist but he also becomes better and doesnt lose his ego or anything to do so) #actually wait since my oc ‘’the prince’’ is very very loosely based on him….. hmmmmm #that being said ik its a headcanon but i wanna figure out if its in good taste yknow #also i dont have npd so i dont want to fuck that up #echoed voice

[sounwise]

The affair [between Paul and Iris Caldwell] was tempestuous. ‘I was madly in love with him while I was going out with him, and then you’re in love with the next person.’ Paul could be an annoying, controlling boyfriend, as young men of his class and background typically were. He expected Iris to behave and dress to please him—‘in straight skirts below the knee, and your hair up in a bun’—and could be jealous and immature, especially when egged on by Lennon. […] shortly after Paul got his first car, a green Ford Classic, they drove through the Mersey Tunnel to the Cube Coffee Bar in Birkenhead, where they had a tiff. ‘I picked up this great big bowl of sugar, a big square bowl—because it was called the Cube Coffee Bar, everything was square in there—and I emptied it over his head.’ Iris then ran towards the Mersey Tunnel, ‘with him driving along after me in the car trying to catch me …’ Deciding she was finished with McCartney, Iris phoned George Harrison. ‘I’m not going out with Paul any more,’ she told him. ‘Oh great!’ exclaimed George, seeing a chance to get the advantage over Paul for once. ‘Can I take you out tomorrow night?’ ‘Of course you can.’ As Iris was getting ready for her date, Paul turned up with tickets for the King Brothers. ‘He said, “Well, I’ve paid for the tickets. It’s a stupid waste of money, so we may as well go.” I’m thinking, what am I going to do? George is going to be here in a minute.’ Good as gold, Mrs Caldwell picked up the telephone and dialled George. ‘Hello, is that you, Margaret?’ she said, when George Harrison answered the phone, pretending she was speaking to a girlfriend of her daughter’s. ‘Oh listen, Margaret, Iris’s boyfriend’s come round and she’s going out with him tonight.’ George asked Mrs Caldwell what she was talking about, telling her he was George, not Margaret. (‘He was a bit slow, you know,’ notes Iris. ‘God love him.’) So Paul took Iris out. The evening ended awkwardly again when Iris attracted the attention of one of the King Brothers, who came back to Stormsville with her and Paul, the rival boys staring daggers at each other until Iris went to bed, leaving her mother to deal with the Romeos. [...]

[—from Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, Howard Sounes]

#this is it this is THE funniest iris caldwell story im dkfjgh #admittedly the frank ifield stuff is also a contender #but this george vs. paul teenage drama!!! please. i love her #(this book is so profoundly all over the place but the cursed unfootnoted source notes Do indicate this bit is from direct interview) #iris caldwell #paul mccartney #george harrison #the beatles #fab: an intimate life of paul mccartney #howard sounes #paul and iris caldwell #george and iris caldwell #paul and george #1962 #(??)

[elfcollector]

you are never going to see me doing anything w ascendent astarion god bless <3

#seeing discourse abt how if u dont like that ending u hate victims of SA (??????????) #insane! anyway. as an SA survivor let me just tell u. not touching the whole 'The Way To Be Strong And Safe #Is To Become An Abuser Also' plot #to be clear its a beautiful plotline! its done rly well! i love that astarion is genuinely awful in it #i think its great at rly forcing the player 2 contend with what theyve done #and allowed someone to do. especially since so much of its done in the interest of resexualizing the guy #but im not doing it. and its DERANGED 2 see takes that suggest that #actually thats the Good Ending and if u disagree you hate abuse victims. like im sorry but UR INSANE #also the metaphor of 'the shit ur abuser does to u never goes away but u can still wrangle a good life out of it' is so. lovely.

[jestroer]

I was gonna make the annual guys I'm actually planning to post something soon I promise but completely honestly my plans for the weekend consist only of rereading my favourite long fic in this entire fandom untill it's last chapter is posted so. Not sure when I'm gonna actually post stuff. I'm planning on drawing a bunch of fanart for it tho!! But later. I'm not sorry btw

#and also I'm working on stuff i can't post at the moment so. #wait and see #the fic in question is I am Weary With Contending! btw!!! #god its so fucking good. i am obsessed with it #ive been meaning to draw fanart for if literally for the whole last year. im gonna do it godspeed 🙏 #maybe not immediately. but ill try to do it little by little for a while after. there's just. so much #i fuckinhg love this fic #god #shitpost

[bootlegfrank]

Who'd be the pathetic necrophiliac out of the blorbos? Like, shaking and trembling and so so so eager, afraid to touch how they want to but cock rock hard, not even getting it in the first time and cumming embarrassingly quick type of pathetic.

#im thinking gee with his stringy hair in his face and anxious eyes darting around #mikey'd be nervous but appear collected i think #i think ray makes a contender too tbh #malcolm hallucinates his dad while hes doing it #i think frank would just be so full of repressed energy that it cant manifest as trepidation #.nsft #dddne #necro