I have my first presentation today in 12 years. It's super low stakes. It doesn't matter, nothing gets registered, there's no grade, it doesn't even have to be good, I only have to talk for 2 minutes. And Yet. I would still rather be dead. I have THE WORST presentation anxiety. I get terrified, my hands shake, my voice shakes and cracks, my mouth gets dry, I sweat, my face gets red, my mind goes completely blank, I stutter and forget what to say. It used to be so bad that I'd straight up just not go to school that day when we had presentations.

So just by the fact that I'm sitting here in the classroom, ready to throw up, but HERE honestly means I've already won!

ngl one of the most useful things i’ve internalized from doing art online is never tell people what to criticize. don’t preemptively apologize for things or point out where you think you fumbled, it’s just priming people to notice minor issues that might not actually matter and hit you where you’re sensitive and throw you off your game. don’t tell people your weak points. if it’s a genuine problem they’ll point it out

I wasn’t kidding abt the ”unlawful amount of gummy bears”. Also throwback to when those tulips were still alive bc rip

i think the turning point in my life both academically and professionally was realizing that. If you Go First, be it a presentation or an interview or whatever. If you go first, you are being judged based on NOTHING but yourself. They aren't comparing you to anyone else, you don't have an act to "follow". You are the Bar. You can literally just do the best you can and at that point it will automatically be the best they've seen so far. And once you're done you're done. You can mentally and emotionally check out.

Game changer insofar as being stressed about presenting because now I just bulldoze over everyone else to go first like a feral hog.

@theofficialsadghostclub

Fan service.

Shepard (custom), Liara / Mass Effect (c) Bioware

Roommaarriage

Luffy and Law live togheter.

They started living together after Luffy's older brother, Ace, decided to go on a trip around the world with his friends. Luffy was left alone and besides being terrible at taking care of himself, he hates loneliness.but none of his friends had space for him, already having their own roommates or living with their parents. So, Law proposes that they live together, he lives in a huge house and has a huge crush on Luffy, it doesn't hurt to help the guy he likes, even if it can cause a lot of headaches. and hes right, in less than a week everything is already a mess, Luffy's friends come to visit, everything is noisy and so chaotic in the house that used to always be quiet and peaceful.

Still, he persists, determined not to go back on his decision and simply kick Luffy out of the house. That's when everything gets confusing; Luffy was always clingy and honest with how he felt, but since he moved in with Law, this has become more frequent and more intense.He hugs Law in the morning when he wakes up, kisses him on the forehead to thank him for the food, he carries Law when he decides that Law has to sleep no matter what, he sits on Law's lap when they are watching TV, he goes to the hospital to remember Law of eating and worst of all: he often, all the time, at any time, in any place, on any occasion, tells Law that he loves him. And it just drives Law crazy. He knows it's not a lie, Luffy doesn't lie. Luffy loves him, it's just not the love Law wants it to be

All of their domesticity, all of their intimacy, all of it drives Law crazy. He wants all of it, but he also wants more. He is in love with Luffy and has no idea what to do, after all he doesn't want to just ruin their friendship and lose it all because of his greed. So, after months of freaking out about all this, he decides that what's best for everyone is if he puts some boundaries between them, draws a firm line between them, friendship, something less intimate and less...suggestive. something that allows him to sleep properly at night.

Meanwhile, Luffy is confused, Torao has been acting strangely, moving away from him, not letting him touch him or kiss him, almost like in the beginning, when he moved in and Law was still shy. Could this be what people call problems in paradise? WILL TORAO FILE FOR DIVORCE? And suddenly Law has Luffy's friends calling desperately wanting to know what happened? Why are they getting divorced so soon? Why is Luffy depressed about the end of their marriage? Why is the marriage ending in the first place???

Is a majority of the kin list just 🍊

FHSJVBFHSD NO BUT KINDA BHSDJGGD

bam. kin 'list' hsjgdfds

I was looking at a few posts about autism (as one does) and it just suddenly clicked into place a fundamental thing about Yuri's character that I'd been grasping at, but hadn't really been able to adequately identify. I still have a much longer and more thorough analysis going through a whole lot of my thoughts on Yuri's character and her experience of autism that i'm working on (of which this will likely be a component), but I thought I'd share this separately just to emphasize.

Post I saw which made this click for me was making fun of the fact that most media depicting impaired empathy in autistic characters explicitly depicts them with this unflappable confidence of never having been rejected by people they love. The crux of this is that in actual reality, autistic people almost always have that experience at some point, for some behavior, for reasons they don't really understand. "There is an invisible line where people will get sick of you, and you have no warning of when you're about to cross it." So frequently, autistic people attempt to ride a razor thin edge, walking on constant eggshells to desperately attempt to avoid crossing that line.

Very often autistic people will attempt to avoid doing anything at all which could be considered weird, or off-putting, and will try their absolute hardest to do things in a way that is acceptable to other people, sometimes to the point of outright suppressing their emotions, because they are afraid that they'll say something just wrong enough that the people they care about will push them away, and they don't understand WHY it happened, but they know it's THEIR fault. Sometimes masking is fighting to appear aloof all the time because you can't regulate your emotions in a way that is acceptable to other people.

And holy fucking Jesus, that fits the exact mold of what I've been trying to talk about with the particular way Yuri's anxieties manifest.

It really feels to me like Yuri has this constant fear of breaking the "rules" of socializing, despite not really understanding what those rules even are. She's constantly afraid of saying something wrong, when she doesn't even know what wrong would be, she's just sure everyone ELSE will know it when they hear it. I think a huge part of her social anxiety comes from her own understanding of herself as a very weird person who doesn't really get a lot of how to socialize, and it seems to me like she's probably dealt with her fair share of social rejection and isolation based on those traits. She then felt she had to take responsibility for those traits, probably because it's the one thing she can change, and she is the one common denominator in all of these bad situations (This is something which is pretty common, actually! "Everyone else can socialize just fine, and I have so much difficulty with it! I must just be broken in some way. I have to try super hard to be normal to make friends!")

I think a big part of why it's so apparent in the Literature Club is because she really thinks she's found a place where she can make friends in spite of all of her issues, so when she starts...being herself, and receives even the smallest HINT of pushback, she overcorrects and tries to rein all of herself in to fix her "mistake", because she really wants to make friends here, and doesn't want them to reject her as well.

She's had this experience of others pushing her away for being weird so often that, coupled with her acknowledged trouble for reading situations, when anybody responds poorly to something and she recognizes it, she immediately overcorrects out of fear of being an annoying burden to everyone around her, and that "correction" consists of suppressing herself into being "normal" (or at least "less weird"), because she believes nobody could actually like her just for being who she is. There's something wrong with her fundamentally, and to make friends, for people to like her and want to be around her, she has to "fix" herself.

it's just, like...

it's really hard for me to interpret Yuri's character that doesn't involve her being somewhere on the spectrum, bros. she's written with such delicately constructed autistic coding, despite the appearance of just being a hackneyed weird girl visual novel trope. she deserves the world.......

something that has changed my life is thinking about where feelings exist in my body and noticing this when they arise

ive never liked powerless saiki aus because the entire conclusion of the series is him accepting his powers as being a part of him that he cant change so like.. in aus where the power remover works, half of his development is erased..

if he had been "powerless" for longer, we wouldve gotten to see him realize this himself and im genuinely sad that we didnt.. we got to see him realize that being powerless wasnt the change he wished it would be and that its something he cant change, but its literally over a two day long period and we miss out on sooo much potential development..

and then in aus where hes born powerless, people think he would have the exact personality and development that he THOUGHT he would if he got rid of/didnt have his powers, like NO ? "without powers he would be another satou-" NO he would be a shy, borderline flamboyant, weird, awkward, genius LOSER.

he would have a more normal relationship with his brother (still probably competitive but in a way more average sibling way and kusuke wouldnt have had the motivation to become so murderous) and he would probably be even more friendless but with less trauma.. he may or may not have ever befriended akechi at all, and the classroom incident wouldnt have happened.. even some of his current friends might not be around if not for coincidences due to his powers or direct involvement from his powers.. (nendo and kaido would for sure still be there though, but this only ensures the idea that he would be the biggest fcking loser ever)

he would still be saiki, but. his powers are a key part of him. he would be totally different without them, but NOT in the way he thinks he would..

Bloodletter and I are So Hot honestly ... gahehehehhehheheh 🥰

we dont have enough Ark & Kip interaction

therefore, i would like to suggest them fretting over an injured Twig

Presentation done!!! The birds are singing, sun is shining, life has meaning again etc. That was the last shitty thing for my bachelor’s degree; it’s smooth sailing from here (only writing & coding and nothing too scary/social)

I just want to talk about the nursery being painted and the purpose of the Tomb to be without a door. Anastasia had a family - and putting to the side the pact with Alecto there's some implicit symbolism to John asking for the workers of the Ninth to die constructing the Tomb with that image of new life. (Still can't articulate my disbelief that he went and didn't think that asking Anastasia of all people, The one who lost her cavalier to him, would have problems)

Yeah. Especially finding this out about the Ninth, where nurseries becoming tombs is a thing we're sensitive about.

On one level we've always known Anastasia had a family. Like, we know she's Harrow's direct ancestor. You can't be heir to the line of someone who never had children. But the nursery.... Yeah. It really hammers it in. Her friends painted a nursery mint green for her children.

And now it's a tomb.