people like this exhaust me to no end. if artists asking for a little help getting visibility and traction for art that you enjoy and downloaded bothers you, then you don’t actually respect artists or the work, you just want the final product. believe it or not artists are not here at your beck and call to entertain you and then be tossed aside when you’ve gotten your fill. im not even asking for money or for you to tell your friends who made your phone wallpaper. im not asking you to make a post and link my socials or anything. im just asking for a simple reblog. there’s really no work required at all, im not even gonna know if you don’t reblog it and did save it, because it’s just a courtesy thing. but you just had to announce it anyway because you wanted to make sure i knew that you don’t respect my wishes for the people who like my art to support a starving artist with the click of a button while i’m making free content for you to enjoy. (and don’t get me wrong, i wouldn’t share my art if i didn’t enjoy it, but the support and feedback are my lifeline.) if you can’t respect my asking for a single reblog enough to even pretend you care by scrolling on by, then i don’t want you interacting with my content anyway. begone

Samhain celebration advice?

Ahhh!! So much to do!!!!

So I have made a Samhain Solitary Celebration Post but it needs some updating and the fact that we are in a year where you can’t do shit lol it needs some revision so let me just make a newish post here:

Wow this took me a while to type up and it’s a lot of info so I am going to first post this with a Read More talking about a brief background of the Holiday and how I celebrate the Sabbat for context and insight for my suggestions. Then I will reblog with the suggestions haha

To get into the origins, meanings and very glossed over history of Samhain, it's a celebration from Ireland celebrating the end of the year, the descent into darkness (they observe this time as the beginning of winter or transition into winter) and celebrating ancestors and passed away loved ones as they felt the spirit world was more tangible in the darker times.

The thinning veil thing actually comes from the victorian era. Old irish people did not believe in the spirit world as another dimension separated by a veil, like they thought you can access the spirit realm in nature like in hills or forests. It’s also why they were like don’t step into anything nature makes into a ring like mushrooms or trees or else you’d fall into the faerie realm which was more like a spirit realm. There's a lot here to unpack so I am going to leave it at that. Also though Ireland has it's wisefolk and definitely has fairies, the spoopy witches up to shenanigans on the night comes from other traditions like settler American folklore that bought Halloween over.

Obviously Samhain morphed and evolved and even got a little warped from it's original source. Bringing in Neopaganism here and the wheel of the year after having invaders bringing Christianity and then apathetic atheism kind of wipe out the traditions of people from the land in England and have all of their roots and spiritual connection to the land lost, some people modern day put together a cycle of celebrations based on the agrarian cycles and a collection of Celtic festivities (mostly Irish) surrounding  growth/fertility/harvest/death that many witches, wiccans and neopagans celebrate. I felt like when I was living in the US of A this distinction wasn't really important cause we were already neck-deep in American capitalism bastardized halloween lol but now I live over here with a handful of Irish people, neopagan/witchy samhain isn't the same as Irish Samhain since the reconstructed Samhain feels a bit like a conglomeration of the western Day of the Dead celebrations that people are trying to reconnect with after generations of people were stripped away from the roots of their culture. (Of course other Celtic people have their day of the dead autumn-turning-to-winter celebrations but I am just clarifying that Samhain is still a thing in Ireland where as the wheel of the year took all of these various celebrations together and smashed them in one). This is when I say I call these festivities their Celtic names as point of reference for other witches that want to celebrate the Earth's cycles and their connection but really it's more like a westernly universalish day of the dead celebrating the height of autumn (the season of dying) the return to darkness and the shadowy realm, reconnecting with our shadow selves (most people get depressed this time of year but it's good to do some internal work to make peace or find harmony then dread it), celebrating the season with delicious in-theme food and making peace with death as it's apart of nature and celebrating passed away loved ones.

Not that most Irish people may care, but to this sad day I realize that England is still doing the most harassing everyone from neighboring countries and denying them rights to celebrate or keep their culture in tact (like denying people the right to keep their languages alive and stuff like that) and already some Irish people living here expressed sadness that people don't take Halloween seriously cause they think it's some American thing when really it's a time they get together with their families and I am like yeah that's fucking wack how people here forgot that history and they pass it off as unimportant. I think sometimes context matters and knowing where and how to tread so maybe if you're in the USA it's not too much of a big deal but I try to be mindful here about it. Not saying that you can't call it Samhain, more saying that you should be mindful and know when to express the distinction in case someone asks in order to respect it's origins and respect Irish people still trying to keep the original traditions intact. (Sometimes I refer to it as the Autumn Crossquarter to make it sound more universal). Also not saying that the neopagan reconstructed Samhain is less important or less valid, more that sometimes distinctions are important in order to be respectful when the original holiday is still in practice by people discouraged to hang on to their roots. 

I do have some Celtic and English ancestry but not heritage. To me heritage means that my parents or even grandparents passed it down to me DIRECT, and my dad passed down his French culture and my mom passed down some Haitian culture and so I say I am french and Haitian. Yes there was some Irish guy in my family back in the day and apparently I am 30% English which messed with my head when I found out through those DNA tests lol (like some fraudulent shit was happening on my French side apparently?!?! How do you get 30% english??) but culturally nor heritage-wise I am not English or Celtic because it wasn't passed down. Like maybe if I had kids here they would have some English ancestry and be culturally english for being born here but just cause I live here doesn't make me this.

Anyway I am clarifying this because when I celebrate the wheel to me it's a spiritual, animist and agrarian cycle where I celebrate the beginning of seasons and the middle-to-transition of each season and their parallel to our life cycle and the moon phases as well. They all overlap and I made a post about it. If you look at the wheel from this perspective it makes the experiences more universal and easier to understand spiritually and why I find all 8 holidays as equally important. I don't worship any Celtic gods or make any art or crafts dedicated to goddess etc. The only "deity" being worshipped is the earth in an animist way and the spirits coming from there. The only thing that doesn't make this as universal as possible is that they relate to 4 seasonal temperate land so if you live in the tropics or the deserts you have to come up with your own wheel but I am planning to make a guide on that cause it's not as challenging as it seems.

Anyway this is quite the large nutshell but tossing in the incredibly glossed over history, the heart of it's meaning and relation to nature (and we are obviously apart of nature so how it relates to ourselves individually), and how I and many others observe and celebrate it from a multicultural view that is all-inclusive as our middle ground is the earth underneath our feet yet also being aware of it's true origins to make the distinction when it matters, can help you understand my recommendations below!

I have a few thoughts on art sharing.

So what actually does suck about the whole guilt tripping for likes and reblog phenomenon is that not many other forms of sharing art gets as much acknowledgement. This is not to say that i am condoning or justifying it. I'm saying, ok, this ish is wrong; moving on, how do we promote our work? Because not a lot of us know how to effectively promote our stuff!

Many social media platforms are really wack and stunt that kind of networking ability- for example Tumblr's only useful for artists if their work gets reblogged through multiple chains, or Insta gets you traction if you use the right tags or post at the right time. God, there was an Insta post that explained this problem more accurately.

But i wanted to talk about the whole "make art for yourself" response. Because... I'm past that besties. I've always made art for myself because i enjoyed it. I enjoyed the process of art. It's my pride and joy, and i know several of us are at the point of sharing our pride and joy where we're saying "look! I made this! It was so much fun! Do you like it?" And it's not a question of "give me validation, i only draw for attention", it's "i want to share with people, i want friends". And, it kinda feels shitty when the all the advice you get is "draw for yourself! motivate yourself!" Like??? How do you think i got up today? How can one get up everyday, making art, and not share it? And not hope for it to be shared? How can one makes endless works of beauty and expect to be content with holding it in their room?

Which don't get me wrong, i do that, in the sense that i like watching back my speed paints and feeling proud of my work.

But then to say to artists' frustration of not reaching a greater audience "just be content with what you have". We are! What's wrong with wanting more though? To feel so confident in your piece saying "i know lots of people are going to like this!" And then hardly get any response at all? Are you gonna tell me to lower my expectations? To quash all and any desire to have our art reach a broader audience? That we have to be content and humble small timers? That's so wack!

Because like, i have multiple artist friends that make incredible work everyday, but sometimes i am not the intended audience! That is to say the content they make should be spread far and wide into the people that would appreciate it to a higher level than i would, but my simple reblog won't ever reach that intended audience. And that viraliness is so rare! And it's not to say my sharing it doesn't matter, but i know how disheartening it is for stuff to only go so far!

So like, what then? What are we supposed to be doing differently?

2020 Creator Wrap: Favourite works

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (or so) favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works.

I was tagged by the wonderful @iressails. Thank you!💛

I don’t speak to many people on here, so I’m just going to tag some mutuals I simp for (i still love you if you’re not tagged sorry i have v bad memory and am generally scared of people) @coultxr @lmillers @atenexo @amirwilson @coulter @bitchinlyras

Also thank you to everyone for liking/reblogging/following me this year. I started making gifs again for the first time in so long and it warms my heart to see people enjoying them. Anyway, time for some controversial takes

1. This gifset of the dance scene in i’m thinking of ending things. Honestly one of the nicest colourings I’ve ever done. I really love that scene and I managed to up the vibrancy on the red hair without the skin tones going wack. Also the blues and the reds are just *chefs kiss* It also took me downloading two different versions of this and a different video player in order to capture the frames and photoshop crashed like twice ahhhh

2. This rainbow set of Mrs Coulter. Also a great labour of love (seriously finding that a gif to do red took so long). Not much more to say, I just think the colours are nice.

3. It’s a tie between what I shall call my ‘ruth being chaotic in interviews’ series. This one of her trying to say alethiometre, this one of general interview chaos™, and ofc brian fisher appreciation. The tags on all those sets were really wholesome and now I’ve seen more Ruth Wilson interviews than any one person reasonably should.

4. This one of Marisa and the spectres. Probably doesn’t seem that remarkable, but it was the first time I started playing around with sharpening and using a 2160p download. I really don’t know what I did, but it has a much more grainy look than my normal gifs, which was fun, and it can be hard to make big gifs look decent, so that was cool. Also that scenes really hot so

5. It’s got to be s01e04 of my hdm rewatch. This was my first series playing with colours a ton and I think this was my best one out of that set.

Some honorable mentions

Colouring I’m proud of: hdm rewatch s01e05 (I literally coloured every frame of the purple gif individually ahhh), mrs wilson (there was a lot of yellow to neutralise), hester and lyra + pan from the hdmsourcefanweek (really wish I could remember how to do this kind of colouring rip), mlm/wlw solidarity crack (again complete fluke, but it looks nice)

Basically I’m the funniest person on this platform: ‘acting choices’, wii music and boreal being dramatic

I love when I call out some fool for their horrible tagging and they have one of their cronies blow up my message box with not one but EIGHT messages. 

**cracks knuckles**

This will be fun.

(re: this reblog of mine) OP has now blocked me, surprise surprise 😉

Let’s begin with a glance at the guidelines that we all agreed to:

Now this post by your “beat friend” is of a leather jacket worn for a cos play of Dean Winchester. And it has these tags:

MOST of these tags are irrelevant to the post.  Especially since there is NOBODY in the actual picture, just a jacket, therefore why are the actors, and characters (aside from dean) tagged? Nature? Student? Animals? SPN fanfiction? Supernaturalau?

THAT is what my deal is. Somebody looking for spn fanfiction, doesn’t want to see a picture of a jacket. 

No I’m not joking. A 21 year old should be able to tag their post correctly. 

My friend is not a Destiheller, also please learn the difference between someone who ships Destiel and someone who is a wack job on the ship, two very different things, Oh really? A destieheller is somebody who tags their posts looking for attention. They are not necessarily an extreme shipper of that ship, but think nothing of slapping that ship’s tag on irrelevant posts. Kind of like your ‘beat friend’, hunny. 

He’s a multi shipper,  we’re both multi shippers, You want to stay in your own lane and bash people’s ships that’s fine, but people like us don’t have a lane, we swerve all over the fricken place, we write wincest fanfiction, You’ve seen my account, you’ve literally reblogged an art piece of mine from that account, so- yeah, please learn what a multishipper is and that they exist, infact it’s been a part of the fandom since season 1, just because people decided to go single ship and bash people doesn’t mean everyone wants to do that And I certainly think you’re far out of your own lane to hate on a post my friend made about a cosplay jacket, and so what it has a fucking bread tag? THIS is a run on sentence. Using a comma is not the same as a period, just because you capitalize the letter after it. 

Hunny, I know full well what a multishipper is. 

Interesting that I’m supposed to “stay in my lane”, while it’s okay for you and your ‘beat friend’ to “swerve all over the place”. You know who does that, drunk drivers and they usually cause accidents because of it. Then again, destiehellers don’t care about anybody but themselves, so it’s a good analogy of just how selfish you two are. 

Not sure what you mean by my seeing your account and I looked but I’m not seeing anything of yours on my blog. Care to be more specific?

And now you are repeating yourself, hunny. If your ‘beat friend’ can swerve all around with his tagging, then it’s hard for me to stay in my lane and avoid his post. 

Reading comprehensive also seems to be a problem with you, since I was talking about a different post which was of a piece of bread tagged ‘sam winchester’, “castiel’ and various other irrelevant tags. (x)

And another post of a farm tagged ‘destiel’. (x)

THREE different posts with major tagging issues. 

That’s their business. Then why are you bothering me? 

random but been meaning to ask someone for a while (specifically you since you’re my go to ao3 writer and I love your stuff) but why does it seem like not that many writers on ao3 made public bookmarks? if it’s a matter of privacy then I get that but otherwise I love seeing what my favorite writers read and liked so I easily stumble upon more great writing! I know you can’t answer for every writer on there obviously but thought I just word vomit and ask finally someone

This is a completely valid question and it’s honestly hard to answer because writers should get recognized, especially if you respect another writer enough to want to know what they’re reading.

My personal answer is this and it’s not valid but it’s what I got :

I read dirty nasty shit that I used to be ashamed of and I didnt want to air out my sinful kinks to the world.

When I first started writing, I got a lot of strange messages from people who were closed minded and picked at little comments I made here and there and it made me really conscious of what I put out into the world. I even have a secret side blog where I reblog shippy art that I won’t post here because there’s a whole lot of toxic discourse that I don’t want to get involved in and some of the things and I’ve been afraid that, that same discourse might circle back to me for what I read (if it hasn’t already come to me through what I’ve written smh) and I was afraid that if someone were to look at what I’ve been reading, someone would go “ohhh, they’re into that? Wack.” since then, I’ve gotten over that, pero I haven’t broken the habit of keeping my bookmarks private because it became a private thing to me. Also, I don’t have many things bookmarked because I’m a disorganized trash baby that loses good works often because I forgot to book mark (seriously I think I might have ten things bookmarked and I’ve had my ao3 for maybe a year???) I also tend to be a secretive “this is personal” kind of person.

Another reason for other writers who might do this: competition. I am very very guilty of being a jealous, protective, and competitive writer in the past and though I am currently getting over that, I’m sure other writers might have the same thought process that I once had. I have actually seen other writers who have said or been mean to different writers because of the attention they were or were not getting tbqh, even though most of the people I interact with are wholesome and sweet beans, there are some snakelike people that don’t want other writers to get recognition which is a bullshit mindset but sometimes it is hard to ignore when one isn’t confident enough in their skill. For a long a time, I was so insecure that I didn’t read any BNHA fan fic because I would find myself comparing my work to others which is not a healthy thing to do in the slightest because we are all going at our own pace and whatnot... Did I stay on topic? Probably not but it’s fine, I’m drunk.

It’s easy to forget that one writer isn’t better than the other. We gotta remember the “two cakes” rule.

I hope this was a good enoug answer that my wack ass brain didn’t just cook up. I hope you could follow it and I hope you don’t judge me too much for being honest 😅😅😅

Before I start posting screenshots and reblogging fan art lemme share my thoughts on season 5 cuz I needa sort this all out in my head

(spoilers under the cut)

- I’m so relieved Pidge and Matt FINALLY found their dad...it was so touching when they reunited.

- I freaking love everyone so much. I freaking LOVE Pidge. Freaking Matt. I love LANCE SO FUCKING mUcH you DON’T UNDERSTAND. Hunk is adorable and pure as always. Keef?????? My beautiful emo gay son. I love him. Shiro?? Well he’s a fake bich but we’ll get to that

- Speaking of Keith. As I feared, there wasn’t much of him. But we found out who his mom is. I freaking CALLED it. The second I saw her I was like hey, she kinda looks like Keith with the hair. I have a feeling they’re gonna be related, either a sister or his mom. And guess what the DIDDLY WACK happened.

- I so desperately want these few things. These are all I ask:

- Pidge and Matt finding their dad. (Check.)

- Finding out how Keith and Shiro are connected cuz come on. There’s something going on there. Brothers??? Who knows. (Not check. Didn’t find out about that). ADDRESSING THE FACT SHIRO IS PROBLY A CLONE (freaking CHECK BITCH!! kind of. it’ll be continued in the next season).

- Lotor interacting face-to-face with everyone, especially Keith (bc I wanna see them connect over being part galra), and Lance (cuz I wanna see Lance pick a fight with him and have Lotor just be amused and tease him). (Kind of.....check....ish. Lotor didn’t interact with Keith at all. :( He interacted with Lance a bit but not to the extent I wanted. And I feel like everyone’s so serious. I wanted to see more sides to Lotor.)

- And lastly, I wanted more moments between Lance and Keith.....and most of all I wanted Keith back in team Voltron. But no. This is such a freaking Lance/Keith drought y’all idk if I can take much more of it.

- Ok that’s the end of the list ^ lemme talk about Lotor and Allura now.

- I don’t rly want to ship them.......but their dynamic is one of my greatest weaknesses. Time and time again I fall for this freaking kind of ship where there’s a bad boy and good girl and enemies to lovers and all that shit. So this is kinda killing me rn lmao. Like I don’t /want/ to ship it......but I kinda do....against my will?? I hate to admit it cuz they genuinely have good chemistry........sigh. The reason I’m so conflicted is cuz for one, I headcanon Lotor as gay...but I can also see him as being pan, so I guess that’s not the real reason. Another thing is I always wanted to see Lotor flirt with Lance cuz I’m secretly Lancelot trash lmao. Also I kinda like the idea of him and Keith...altho ofc I’m a K//l///ance shipper at heart (putting dashes cuz I don’t want this post in the tag).

- Anyway, I really wish there were more of Keith, I miss him so much. It’s killing me. But I’m satisfied with how much Lotor we got, cuz I freaking love that purple bich. I really enjoyed seeing him get along with everyone and I know he’ll probly betray them at some point.........but either way I love him so much. We got to know him better as a character, which I’m excited about. He’s one of my top faves at this point. Do I stan????????????

- Back to that Fake-Ass Motherfucker of a Bitch Shiro. He made my son sad. I was like this......is a sign. The real Shiro.....would not. Also where is his fuckin emotion. He’s so devoid of it. And I’m missing Sha///llura.....hardly any moments for them. He doesn’t interact with her the way he used to....or is that just me. Idk man I just always had a feeling. Anyway I’m slightly?? annoyed with how slow the pace is but at the same time I’m glad they’re not rushing. I look forward to season 6 when we’ll FINALLY get this Shiro business over with like I JUST WANT THE REAL SHIRO BACK ALREADY PLS

- Things I hope for in season 6:

- FUCKING K///LA///NCE MOMENTS PLS????? It’s been a fucking DROUGHT AND IT’S KILLING ME I’M NOT FUCKING KIDDING LIKE........please. It’s like they sensed the gay and were like nope we gotta keep this hetero....we gotta separate them......and I’m dying squirttle

- That brings me to a whole other tangent that I may or may not delve into later in a separate post if I have the energy.....anyway on with the list

- Sh///a////lura moments?????? Pls.......I still ship it

- Lotor to reconnect with his mom :(

- Lotor to not end up betraying everyone......I know it’s very likely but listen. It would be far more complex and interesting and less predictable if they didn’t go that route. I want him to almost go thru w/ betraying them, but to have a change of heart and undergo major character development. I want inner conflict. That’s far more interesting to me.

- A Hunk-centric episode....I’m glad Pidge got more attention and development, now it’s Hunk’s turn. Like pls give this boy more material

- SHIRO UNCLENCH YOUR FISTS U FAKE-ASS BICH

- Why the FUCK have we still not figured out how Shiro and Keith are connected. Didn’t that whole issue get hinted at in like, season 2???? And we STILL haven’t followed up on it

- So yeah pls follow up on that it’s been 84 yrs

- More about Keith’s past. We’re making progress (we met his mom holy shit) but more pls

- REVEAL HOW FAKE SHIRO IS THAT FAKE ASS BINCHEFER

- I don’t think the fake Shiro has bad intentions tho. he just confuzzled :c

- And uhhhhhh I guess that’s it.

- Oh wait one last thing. Pls NEVER introduce a female love interest for Keith. He’s gay so stay back u heteros. (I didn’t mention this before but ngl before I realized Keef’s mom was probly gonna be related somehow, I thought she might be his love interest and I was like heeeeeell no. But then I remembered the title of the ep “bloodlines” and I was like wow I’m an idiot ofc she’s his mom)

- Once again.........I’M DYING TO SEE MY BOIZ INTERACT AGAIN IT’S BEEN 84 YRS AND U KNOW EXACTLY WHICH BOIZ I’M TALKIN ABOUT

- ok the end srry that was a lot