genuinely didn't think I'd make it to 18 let alone 22 so now I'm looking around like..... Now What

having a very rough night so raph doodles needed to be made

when in need, mash two interests together

Bestie Deficiency

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I'm not a bad writer. I'm not a bad writer. I'm not a bad writer. I'm not a bad writer. I'm not a bad writer. I'm not a bad writer. I'm not a bad writer. I'm not a bad writer. I'm not

This fandom has a weird insistence that nothing can stand on its own and everything must be connected to everything else.

Like the two forgotten gods can’t be new characters, clearly they must the Tharizdun/Luxon/the Raven Queen’s predecessor, even though the entire thing is that no one knows these forgotten gods even existed, and the latter characters are all well documented.

There’s a city on Ruidus? Clearly is must be Avalir/Aeor/Cognouza despite that not making a lick of sense.

Morrigan turned out to be a hag with the pseudonym ‘The Fate Stitcher’? Clearly she must also be Isharnai, despite Isharnai being known as the Prism Sage, is connected specifically to misery rather than fate in general, is not in the Feywild and so would not have time dilation capabilities.

There’s a low level information dealer in Jrusar? Clearly that must be Essek because apparently he ain’t got better shit to do.

A wizard named Laerryn and a wizard named Ryn exist ~1,000 years apart? Clearly they must be the same person despite us seeing Laerryn die onscreen and there being a millennium and an apocalypse between them.

Y’all, new things are allowed to happen, and things are allowed to be what they are.

I haven’t been here long. What irritating changes have been made?

Credit where it's due, some changes have been good, like polls and stuff! But the big recent changes thus far that I would classify as irritating are:

- The UI change. This one may be less irritating for newcomers because it's basically the same layout as twitter and instagram, but for a lot of folks who've been here a long time, it feels cramped and like a loss of identity for the site. For many, the appeal of tumblr is that it ISN'T an algorithm hell like twitter or insta. Also, there's the annoyance of having to relearn where everything is, because it all got moved around.

- The users being lab rats for various tests the devs wanna pull out of nowhere without consenting to beta testing new site features- like the one that took away user icons on the dash for like half the site. They finally put them back after getting enough feedback that said NO, but users were so used to their feedback being disregarded that they were half expecting the change to be pushed through anyway.

- The Netflix tie-in advertising being pushed even to people who had PAID tumblr for a no-ads experience. Complete with them somehow thinking it would be a good idea to put an unescapable-by-scrolling spooky clown on peoples' dashboards that u had to use ublock to get rid of. While I'm not scared of clowns and often find them quite charming, it sucks that staff didn't take coulrophobia being a common fear into account.

- A wave of fully sfw trans posts being wrongfully marked Mature and staff doing little to nothing about it. Not sure if this is still ongoing, but it destroyed a lot of trust and good will. (LGBT+ users have been having to fight a constant war against censorship ever since the adult content ban on tumblr, so yeah... Nevar 4get the list of banned search words that would bring back no results, like 'girl')

- The site gradually moving away from customization. Tumblr is a BLOGGING site. But it seems to have lost sight of that fact, because most new users don't even know you can fully customize your blogs with css and stuff (an option that is now off by default for new accounts!), because of the in-dash viewer giving you only how blogs look on mobile, which is a lot more uniform. There, it's more like every other site- you get a banner and icon. Oh, but you can change colors and fonts from a drop-down list too, that's cool I guess. Though they recently took away custom color schemes on Message windows, just another little bit of personalization taken away.

- TUMBLR. LIVE. Basically tumblr teamed up with a skeevy dating app partner to allow for livestreams- but not the cool kinda livestreams like on twitch where you can draw or play games, no- to a site full of people who value anonymity, they decided to push phone cam only livestreams. Not only that but by agreeing to the terms, you're giving out tons of personal data including your location to said skeevy dating app partner and all of THEIR third-party ad partners. Needless to say, most people didn't wanna use it, so instead of users it's flooded by p*rn bots (which is ANOTHER issue we've been dealing with for a long time and have been getting an even bigger influx of FROM tumblr live) and scammers. And thus, since tumblr likes to put a carousel of current streams on people's dashes, you often get softcore p*rn thumbnails from the bot streams with no way to avoid it except for toggling off tumblr live entirely.

- Oh wait. That's right. You CAN'T toggle it off. Because you can only snooze it for a while until BAM, you're jumpscared by a carousel of ladies licking your screen again! But hey, at least they made the snooze 30 days instead of the 7 it used to be, right? Yeah, except for the fact that you can't get rid of the tumblr live button itself on the app anymore, and now it's front and center with a NEW notification tag on it, overlapping your dash and cramming useful stuff like the search button out of the way.

NOW- A lot of this stuff CAN be at least mostly fixed on desktop by installing ublock and xkit and tampermonkey + dashboard unfucker... But that's a lot of stuff just to make the site usable, you know?

it feels cosmically unfair that i think about writing all the time want to write all the time and sit down to write all the time and i come up with two sentences at best. there should be some reward system i think

You know, that would be ANGSTY COMICAL if we mixed that in the aftermath of the reveal of who is the real creator, since it could be taken as the creator REPLACING characters who hurt them.

-🥘Stew

that was the intent!

i think diluc would have it easiest. red is from a hateful part of his past, and he knows that he’s grown beyond that stage. if it weren’t for red’s temperament, he’d want to try and connect, if only to gain his trust. it still hurts, knowing that even after all this time he still failed to be what you needed, but it burns him the least.

fischl would be worse. night is everything she tried so badly to be, down to her own oz. to make it worse, night couldn’t care less about fischl, ignoring her monologues about who’s the real princess. the only one she needs the approval of is you, and she’d gotten that the second she was first summoned. she does fischl the mercy of letting her keep her name, but even that is mostly at your discretion. ‘fischl,’ ‘night,’ whatever. she just needs to protect you where amy failed.

and kaeya… my poor beloved. if night is what fischl wanted to be, shade is what kaeya has to be. night is a persona that fischl copied, shade is the very mask kaeya had put on for all his life. he’d entirely remade himself, down to the name he used and the way he treated his fellow knights, and it still wasn’t enough. all of his effort was poured into making himself something that could be accepted, that could be good enough. he’d thought he’d done a good job when he was first marked as a vessel, but now in the hunt it’s clear that his palatability only ran skin deep. shade is what you need, shade is what you want, and he’s genuine about it. shade’s entire life is yours, and he was rewarded for that devotion with your affection, earning a place at your side. and kaeya had devoted himself to the hunt instead, was so blinded by his own desires that he’d ignored the resistance of his vision. diluc may hate his past and fischl may hate night, but kaeya can only really hate himself.

I have no idea where all of you came from but here's the colored version of my drawing of Husk.

have you ever heard the story of the man who was running from the wolves and fell off the edge of the cliff? He managed to hold on to a root sticking out of the ground. Above him, the hungry wolves. Below him, razor sharp rocks and the ocean. Next to him is a patch of strawberries.

when you tell this story you're supposed to ask the person you tell it to "what do you do?" and they can offer you a variety of solutions & you will say, to each of them, that no, it is impossible. But there is an answer to "what do you do" and it's "eat the strawberries".

so i feel like, that's been on my mind lately because falling in love has been the experience of getting chased by wolves & falling off a cliff & hanging over razor sharp rocks and ice cold ocean water, but there's a patch of strawberries next to me

only, there are no wolves, there is no cliff, there is no ice cold ocean water or sharp rocks beneath me. there are only strawberries. but my mind is convinced about the other thing you know? it's convinced. so i'm holding a handful of strawberries, eating them while trembling & shaking because I'm about to die

even though i won't die. even though there's only more strawberries to be had.

i need to go pound joey drew into a pulp RIGHT NOW

Had a really good conversation with my therapist yesterday that has left me feeling better about life & the future than I have in... months, honestly (which also has me feeling really good about her ability to help me continue sorting through things).

I was talking about my distress about the future and in particular what I'm going to do when I graduate, since grad school isn't the most stable option, and she pointed out that since I was spiraling over hypotheticals, maybe it made sense to simply make up my mind about the first step, since applying to grad school is hardly the same as committing to grad school. And she was so right. I am so good at feeling like I need to make the right, perfect decision -- especially after making mistakes with school in the past -- that I have been worrying myself into depressive spirals over what the "right" decision is here. But making up my mind to at least apply and find out what my options are is a decision, that will give me a lot more information in the long run than paralysis over if it's "okay" to apply at all.

It'll still take a lot of work, obviously, and l don't know if I'll even get in anywhere, much less actually commit to doing a PhD if I do. But it has taken such an incredible weight off my shoulders just to say "Okay, I am going to apply, what next?" Because it means I can put all that nervous energy to actual use! Instead of spiraling the next time I start thinking about my options in the future, I can go do research on different PhD programs (without feeling guilty the whole time, like I have been until now)! I can ask my favorite professors for advice! I can reach out to current grad students to ask what they think of their advisors! All of which is actually productive and will help me make the most informed choice I can if and when the time comes, instead of ruminating endlessly on what the "best" one is!

TL;DR -- my therapist is very smart and understands me and the things my brain gets stuck on in a big way, and her advice has dislodged literal months of extremely disordered thinking just like that. Because now I feel like I've made a choice and have something to work towards. And also like I can breathe.

talking to a friend about getting back into art and i think the #1 most important piece of art advice i could ever get or give is just "figure out what is FUN to you"

like i think there is sooooo much emphasis on how to build SKILL in art but a lot of it really treats art like a job or like video game grinding, like it's this thankless job that you have to work at in order to reach a Threshold and i know it's not EASY to make yourself have fun but like

imo a solid 70% of the reason i create art is because the Act of Drawing is fun to me. it's fun problem-solving and planning and putting down lines and playing with colors and tools. it's fun to depict little scenes in my head or to create outfits or to find ways to fill the canvas. never forget that creating can be fun. sometimes it's hard and sometimes you have to battle through your own blockades to get there but the ultimate goal should always be to ENJOY it, to find what you enjoy doing and then do it forever. improvement will follow enjoyment.

i think especially with all the debate about ML image generation it's more important than ever to embrace FUN. if you're only focused on the end result it's so easy to get in your own head- to think about what doesn't look good or what skills you don't have yet or to compare yourself to other artists. but photography didn't kill the art of drawing and AI won't either because, simply put, there will always be people who want to do the physical act of making art because it's fun to do! using paints and markers, splashing colors around, doing shitty pen doodles, using the symmetry tool in your art program to do abstract mandalas that are just squiggles formed into patterns. do art like you're 5 and you've been handed markers to pass the time. do art like you're bored in class and you're keeping your brain entertained by drawing stick figure comics in the margins. do art like an absent thing, do art because it satisfies your brain. the goal is not to make something beautiful and perfect, the goal is to make something because your hands need to make and your body needs to make.

Heya! Saw your cry for a distraction and honestly such a mood.

I've got a question!

What's your least favorite thing to draw/do when you make art?

I'm on my own art journey right now and kind of dread the transition from lineart to coloring.

Trying to study anatomy right now and ignore rendering but I'm curious what other artists feel is challenging or just like 'ugh, ok time for [x]'

OHHH in terms of what's challenging, for me it's definitely coloring, rendering, backgrounds, and composition HAHA (<- chronic flat colors user who only draws character art on a floating white background)

i love focusing on gesture and lines when i draw ^_^ i rely mostly on intuition for the other stuff but it really only takes u so far T_T i'll spend hours trying to fix something by trial and error when i probably couldve saved that time by putting in more conscious studying/practice lol

Yeah my brain is having all sorts of thoughts over Pepa meddling in Eddie’s dating life after Margaret brought Buck a new couch that doesn’t fit (and is going to meet a bad ending) and the fever dream that was Buck on Eddies couch and a new kitchen scene in 6x12

In an episode called performance anxiety and after whatever the poker thing turns out to be and the couch of it all

I am squeeing over it so hard!!