Procrastination doodles of sabo for the king sabo au :)

its crazy how coming into clinical social work, i really just thought I was up against systems and cycles of trauma....but it turns out i'm up against those two things AND other therapists. the amount of work spent correcting mistakes from other clinicians--whether with clients or during the classroom--is fucking crazy.

i totally get we're all on different journeys in terms of being clinicians. but it is insane finding out day after day of therapists and clinicians saying the worst things ever to clients. demeaning them, telling them "it's all in their head", the racism and the ableism and harm that is caused. like no fucking wonder people are afraid to seek therapy (on top of the accessibility issues). while i'm a little biased and think that at the very least clinical social work training focuses on viewing people within their environments (so not engaging in the medical/individualist models of practice that a lot of counseling programs focus on), that doesn't mean it gives every person the skills to be an effective therapist. i'm also not saying i'm the best clinician ever--I'm literally in training--but boy! it is jarring seeing how some of my peers interact in class and wondering...is that how you are with your clients??

my social work program at the very least also has a focus on anti-racism, but i know students from other programs and some of them don't even mention racism AT ALL and focus entirely on diagnosing people "correctly", or finding the perfect form of therapy to use on a client. but man, what none of these programs teach are basic life skills. wanting to be a clinician isn't enough, especially considering that an inhumane amount of people in my program are 1. so nervous about making mistakes that they lose scope of their practice 2. have so much internalized racism/white guilt to work thru 3. or they have absolutely no listening skills.

again, im not trying to make it seem like I am the number 1 clinician in the world ever. I don't even have a psych background or bachelor's in social work. my reasons for going into social work are quite selfish (I want a job that is very flexible, easily transferable, and can be done in different contexts), and the helping people part is just a plus. i'm just saying it's very jarring seeing other people in training and realizing they too are working with clients. i have conversation after conversation about these issues with other BIPOC/queer/marginalized clinicians, so I know i'm not the only person worried about some of the people that will be out of this program in a few years practicing on their own or with vulnerable populations.

today's a good day! here's a sketch :D

🐇bnuuy

Consumed good media... time to finish BAD media.

In the midst of the story REALLY trying to stress that Slash is Pure Evil, TRULY evil, what Real Evil looks like and Totally Totally evil evil evil with absolutely no other traits whatsoever besides being L + Stinky + Foreigner + Creep to women, Slate announces she is pregnant with Gray Wing's kits.

Re: hes not a "REAL" dad to Thunder or the Tom Trio. "Weren't really his kits." He's GOING to be a father. There's a nice moment later where he's like, "My love for my biokits doesn't feel different from the love I had from the others" but that does not change 6 books' worth of them explicitly downplaying his connection to the other four because they have biodads to angst about.

I'm stating something obvious, but god, I can't stand Gray Wing. I hate how this character gets praised as "The Best Dad Ever" when this WHOLE arc treats his connection to the kits as inferior to whatever abusive biofather wanders by. I despise how his "reward" for looking after all these kids who do NOT see him as their true dad is REAL children.

Path of Stars feels... fanservicey. Like it's desperately trying to tug at your heart strings, pulling cutesy shit like this. Look How Happy He Is :) He's Gonna Be A Dad :) and it just makes me resent him even harder.

snippet of tpac ch 11

who wants to see bruce being bullied? doesn't matter, here you go

...

“—per my last missive, Sir: if you want this equation to exist, then the principles of linear algebra must necessarily exist.” Korvin waves a thin stack of ruled paper—covered with sprawling formulas, symbols, bullet lists, and patchwork paragraphs on both sides—like he’s trying to banish a demon. That demon, in this instance, is “Batman being stubborn.”

Bruce looks taken aback, like something is happening outside of his set parameters. From how Dick tried to explain it: apparently, Bruce and Korvin have a whole “pen pals” routine going on, and it’s still thriving despite them sharing the same living quarters for the past few months?

Do they actually waste stamps on this? Where do they hide the envelopes?

(Dick raised his hands in surrender at that line of questioning.)

Tim knows Bruce is a creature of habit and standards of operation—of which he completely respects because it’s efficient—but his staunch adherence to routine is next-level neurotic. Normally, he'd be furious about being sidetracked.

Yet, Korvin’s thrown caution to the wind and got so mad over math, like the fussy nerd that he tries to hide being, that he’s directly confronting Bruce—full “David vs Goliath” vibes here. And he's winning.

“I trust your work,” Bruce finally says, holding his hand out for the papers.

That only makes Korvin’s face twitch harder. “Sure. Why not. Everyone needs a bit of make-believe. Escapism in these trying times and shitass economy.”

“‘Shitass economy,’” Cass murmurs, of course latching onto the bit that everyone reacts to.

Babs sighs in disgust.

...

holy moly guys they are everywhere

That wikihow article has untapped potential

Ok um sorry about that. Last image from bugsoupp_ on twitter, everything else from driftingnova

The delight of writing Niamh and Chase stubbornly trying to convince themselves they’re just friends even though they’re doing the most intimate romantic shit you’ve ever seen in your life during the fwb stage >>>

been learning to play ironsworn (gritty fantasy ttrpg which you can play with a gm but is mostly suited for solo or small group co-op gmless play) after having the rulebook pdf for several years (stars finally aligned to remove invisible thing blocking me from reading it idk) because i'm on another solo ttrpg kick & i don't know what took me so long to get around to this game because it genuinely is exactly what i was looking for. years ago when i was playing through solo 5e modules i should have just been playing ironsworn (believe it or not, 5e isn't very suited to solo play and is extremely clunky when you try lol).

also though i have dabbled in some other solo ttrpgs, a considerable amount of them are journaling games which is fun but imo considerably more work (usually by the time i'm a quarter of the way through the journal entry, i know how to entire scene played out and i want to move on to the next gameplay thing, so i get frustrated and bored quickly. it feels like when you solve a level in a video game but don't have the coordination to pull off the necessary move so you have to spend 20 extra minutes doing something you already figured out), so i really appreciate like not needing to write something for the game to progress (ive been taking notes for my own record since im playing solo and thus am not really out loud roleplaying the way you do in a group, but i definitely could do that instead and not take notes and the game would still function perfectly)

& ive been playing by myself but also in the past ive played a lot of ttrpgs in very small groups which has been other games but is mostly dnd and like. we also should have been playing ironsworn so that having a gm was not necessary. have definitely played games where we had to adapt the rules soooo much to do something that is just base game included in ironsworn. plus it's rules-light enough to do pretty complex moves that pose difficulties in bulkier games (ever introduced someone to dnd and they tell you they want to do a sick backflip and catch something and then attack and you have to tell them that will require several different consecutive rolls and some creative liberties with how the rules are 'supposed' to let you move? you can just Do That in ironsworn. use the strike move and describe it. done!)

the one thing is that although it's rules-light enough to theoretically play any setting or genre (some with more difficulty than others), ive found so far that like... the grittiness and sense of threat is very built into the mechanics so that would be sort of difficult to work around or change (but i think it's great from a game design perspective). what i mean is like, okay: you start with 5 max hp. there isn't really a way to raise this max hp, you just slowly gain abilities (assets) that make you less likely to have to lose the hp in the first place, or that make it easier to recover. when you encounter foes, you rank them on a scale of 1 -5, and enemies on the lowest side of this scale do one harm to you, while enemies on the highest side do five harm to you. so even though encountering an epic enemy won't always be deadly due to the assets you have, they are ALWAYS capable of taking you down to 0 hp with one good hit. so the feeling of threat is much more present compared to games where your character starts to be able to just tank and push through a failure or huge threat.

admittedly also i'm playing solo, im still learning how to balance combat, and also i built a character who has NO combat talents and iron (the close quarters fighting stat) is one of my lowest stats so i personally am under much more threat than if you built a character who knew how to fight or who could do deadly harm. but also the other thing about combat is it's extremely difficult to maintain control of the fight; you have to score a strong hit to do it on basically all moves, and there's a really limited pool of moves available when you don't have the initiative, and obviously none of them really favour you. i don't know that this makes combat genuinely more difficult, but it does make you feel like the fight is always about to spiral out of your control. every second you let it drag without decisive action feels like it brings you closer to dying. like i said, this is a feature of the game design and not a problem in any way. just thinking about it because when i was initially learning i was going to try to supplant it into a homebrew fantasy world of my own but the tone just wouldn't be right. and that it is somewhat difficult to replicate the kind of worlds that i typically play or run for dnd, which tend to lean somewhat sillier and definitely much higher fantasy

but i like to try new things and tbh especially in dnd i find that i very rarely feel that sense of threat and when i do feel it, it has nothing at all to do with the actual mechanics and reality of the combat and everything to do with how well the dm sells it to me and makes it sound and feel scary and dangerous. which is a testament to what a good gm can do for you but i do appreciate the threat feeling more built-in and also being actually real.

What do you think of the latest horikoshi sketch ?

That I wish we got literally anything else than yet another Togachako stuff.

As someone who is not into it, I feel way saturated and bored with them.

It’s Hori’s thing. He gets into drawing some female characters and then that’s all we get for a while to the detriment of every other character who gets shit, rushed treatment. Sadly, the writing of those characters still remains lacking as it’s mostly about the aesthetic.

It happened with Mirko, happened with Nagant. Now it’s happening again.

I’m sure there are plenty of fans who love it, but I feel mostly sad, as a fan who doesn’t feel serviced much lately.

god i wish i were more articulate so i could actually explain my thoughts on all the milven/byler visual parallels...... people using the situational and framing similarities to "prove" that mike feels the same way about both el and will when truly the further you get into both relationships the clearer the discrepancies become between the emotional weights and contexts of each scene.... and the way they're both framed the same way to make those discrepancies stand out even more

i really should make that "mutual map" one of these days

hngnwntnentnrneenfnenfengndngrnengnf

of Men again

AKA "Gold, East, Easterlings, humans in general and other evil-coded stuff" AKA "no, Morgoth, your trademarks are invalid" AKA "reclaiming the symbolics" AKA "another post on reading Tolkien in Christian context"

And by "Christian context" I mean less the values and more the "Silm is a fantasy prequel-fanfic for the Bible, especially the New Testament" (which is at least in some points of Tolkien's life, how he wrote it)

And as all fanfic authors, GMs and generally people working creatively in a preestablished world, especially one with some preestablished future, there's no fun like foreshadowing. Seriously. Adding foreshadowing to everything is the best creative fun. OK, I'm biased. Anyway

So, what do we have in the Silm? West is Valinor, East is the evil guys. Also, dark-skinned guys are generally in majority (I know Bór exists) evil (which is racist, but we'll make it less-racist in a moment) and serve Morgoth. He just goes and claims stuff as his own, and the Valar hold on to what is left.

hmm... I wanted to add silver/gold and moon/sun divides here, but they get complicated and aren't a good example, even if I instinctively map them to the West/East divide. I think it's just me in this case.

What do we have in the Bible? Where do the main event happens? East. To this day, churches face east, because east is the holy-ish direction. Also, symbolically, sunrise is a big thing.

That's a good metaphor for the elf-human difference. Elves are chasing the sunset, so that the last rays fade slower and last so very long. Humans cannot chase. The night falls upon them, but then the sun rises anew (spoiler: it doesn't set after that). But first the night must fall. And it is sad and scary and all that.

West-facing Elves versus East-facing Men.

So, back to the main event. Easterlings... well, the Jews aren't very pale-skinned or grey-eyed or beardless. To put it mildly. So it's kinda "Tolkien is racist in places", but maybe also kinda "Tolkien goes for maximum contrast and Morgoth getting defeated from the center of the lands he'd claimed as his own" maybe. a bit.

Like maybe in his mind putting so many evil Easterlings into the story still balanced well, because hey, later they got Jesus and all His early blorbos followers? Or maybe I shouldn't go guessing what was Jirt thinking.

Anyway, if you look at Silm as a Bible fanfic, some things suddenly jump into places.

I'm not saying it's the only way to look at it, I recently listed 2 or 3 (if we count Arthurian myth as separate) other angles. Silm is multidimensional, various parts of the story make sense when looking from various angles, that's why it's so incoherent at times.

so obviously on a meta level beholders and beholderkin only roll for random eyebeam attacks for game balance reasons, because 'and the beholder has a disintigration beam!! watch out!!' is dangerous in a way that's fun and exciting but 'and the boholder systematically disintigrates each of you, game over' is not, but this mechanic is very funny to me in the specific context of being able to have a gazer as a familiar which is bonded with and theoretically obedient to a player character

all day long he's telekinetically pushing things off your desk over and over like an asshole cat, using fear on passing children, sniping birds out of a flock overhead with frost rays. you get into combat. you tell him to only focus on attacking with frost rays, a thing you absolutely know he is fully capable of doing, and he just simply does not. actually he's gonna go ahead and do whatever he feels like, thanks

So sorry if this is bothering you but so curious as well... why do you hate Guts?

Thanks for your time ❤

you’re not bothering me!

I think the simplest way to answer this is with one of Olivia’s own lyrics from pretty isn’t pretty when she sings “none of it matters and none of it ends” because. That is kind of her whole ethos about how life works. She believes that! And so her work, to me, is profoundly cynical and self-absorbed because it can’t point to anything bigger (none of it matters) so it revolves purely around her own feelings. It won’t ever situate itself in a wider picture. And I love whining in a song tbh. I love when an artist captures those uglier emotions —the discontent, the restlessness, the irritation, the blandness and staleness of it all and the railing against it—because those are all part of the human experience. I am continually shocked—it is shoCKING—by how many negative emotions I can and do experience over and over again. But it is thankfully against the backdrop of reality. My bad moods are something that can be so unpleasant to feel and so ugly to witness—I wrestle with how ugly and small my suffering is—but there is a way in which, all discourse about the validity of any and all of my feelings accounted for, those aren’t real. Just symptoms of my suffering and sometimes my convalescence (lol, love a symptom of convalescence) but reality is still always so much realer. It’s always ready to break in a million times a day; the beauty and sturdiness of reality, the texture of existence, as Flannery O’Connor once said, is always there and with enough time (and with patience and help and love) I can get back to contact with it. Not just the state of my own mind full of bitterness and worry and pain, endlessly stewing in its own unhappiness.

I am not good at that, it takes a lot to get me there. But I guess my point is—to circle back—Olivia’s music doesn’t try and doesn’t want to. Its scope is so narrow, every song no matter how pleasing at first eventually sours (lololololol) because it’s JUST rooted in her own experience, generally her own suffering. And there’s no sharpness or cleverness in the world (she can be both sharp and clever!) that can hide that lack of range. So you hear a song once—for me, it was brutal—-and you’re like YEAH. I recognize this kind of whininess because I’ve felt it before. There is something true to it! But the more she writes the more you watch her do it over and over again (sonically, too, she loves to speak-talk and tbh they’re just sub-par remixes of brutal) the more you start to be like “oh, is that it? We’re not going anywhere with this? There’s no turn or catharsis or bridge or anything that lifts us out of this even for a second?” and it’s just —blegh.

And the thing is there doesn’t even have to be, like, some triumphant girlboss victory where she feels better. I’m not saying her songs are bad because they’re sad and depressing. It’s that they establish no outside contact with reality. They are, for all her clever little film-noir references or whatever, only ever self-referential. And that gets old so fast no matter who is talking.