i am a being capable of immeasurable love and whimsy

“Straws give you wrinkles” “sunlight gives you age spots” “smiling with your eyes gives you laugh lines” okay but what if I did that. What if I drank Vanilla Coke from a bendy straw and danced in the sunlight and laughed with reckless abandon. What then. We all age we all get wrinkles we all grow old and dammit I will do it with the sun on my face and the joy of life at my back

start with the basics and finish the animatic i have almost done?

nah dude have them beta kids dancing in 12fps

Low level/continuous pain tips for writing

Want to avoid the action movie effect and make your character's injuries have realistic lasting impacts? Have a sick character you're using as hurt/comfort fodder? Everyone has tips for how to write Dramatic Intense Agony, but the smaller human details of lasting or low-level discomfort are rarely written in. Here are a few pain mannerisms I like to use as reference:

General

Continuously gritted teeth (may cause headaches or additional jaw pain over time)

Irritability, increased sensitivity to lights, sounds, etc

Repetitive movements (fidgeting, unable to sit still, slight rocking or other habitual movement to self-soothe)

Soft groaning or whimpering, when pain increases or when others aren't around

Heavier breathing, panting, may be deeper or shallower than normal

Moving less quickly, resistant to unnecessary movement

Itching in the case of healing wounds

Subconsciously hunching around the pain (eg. slumped shoulders or bad posture for gut pain)

Using a hand to steady themself when walking past walls, counters, etc (also applies to illness)

Narration-wise: may not notice the pain was there until it's gone because they got so used to it, or may not realize how bad it was until it gets better

May stop mentioning it outright to other people unless they specifically ask or the pain increases

Limb pain

Subtly leaning on surfaces whenever possible to take weight off foot/leg pain

Rubbing sore spots while thinking or resting

Wincing and switching to using other limb frequently (new/forgettable pain) or developed habit of using non dominant limb for tasks (constant/long term pain)

Propping leg up when sitting to reduce inflammation

Holding arm closer to body/moving it less

Moving differently to avoid bending joints (eg. bending at the waist instead of the knees to pick something up)

Nausea/fever/non-pain discomfort

Many of the same things as above (groaning, leaning, differences in movement)

May avoid sudden movements or turning head for nausea

Urge to press up against cold surfaces for fever

Glazed eyes, fixed stare, may take longer to process words or get their attention

Shivering, shaking, loss of fine motor control

If you have any more details that you personally use to bring characters to life in these situations, I'd love to hear them! I'm always looking for ways to make my guys suffer more write people with more realism :)

Today in Hip Hop History:

A Tribe Called Quest released their second album The Low End Theory September 24, 1991

I truly encourage you to add things that simply bring you joy to your list of things to do that day.

it doesn't have to be big, it can be as simple as making your favourite drink or food for lunch or spending some time on a hobby or watching a show you enjoy.

adding things to look forward to and giving yourself time to experience those things is just as important as doing every other thing on that list.

you're allowed to plan to do things for no other reason than it makes you happy.

if ANYONE knows what this is from....... lets kiss with tongue.

TRADITIONAL ARTISTS! i wanted to make sure you guys know about erasable pens- not because pencils dont exist but because they ERASE WITH HEAT! so if you do a sketch in purple and ink it over in nice contrasting black so you're sure you got every line, you can hit that puppy with a heat gun for like 10 seconds and the sketch instantly vanishes

rebog to save a life etc 🙏

I had a day off yesterday.

And I can already practically hear the assumptions that such a statement is prompting the reader to make. Those assumptions are wrong. I don't mean I didn't work. I did, for about 8 hours. That's not at all what I mean.

I mean my wife took the kids out at 9:30, spent the night with her mom, isn't back yet the next morning.

There are things I NEED people on this website to understand about parenting. And I've talked about it before, and I'll talk about it again, because honestly the way that Tumblr as a cohort talks about parents makes me sick. Multiple polls have shown that only about 2% of people on here are parents. We're a huge minority, and we're constantly talked over, ignored, or accused of being bad parents (like, personally, I have had people reply to my comments or come on to my posts and tell me I shouldn't have my kids). In my case, being a parent means I'm almost 41, I'm married to @ramblingandpie, and our children are inching up on being 8 and 6 years old.

My entire day, and therefore my entire life, revolves around them. I'm up most mornings at 5 AM, because that's the earliest they're "allowed" to wake up, and so my brain just defaults to being awake around then - better to wake up before them, at least then I get a few minutes in the morning. Between 5 and 7, I sit with them, do my social media, work on side blogs, study Chinese. Then it's helping them get ready for school, then my wife or I or both get them on the bus, and then I work until the last possible minute, which is either when I need to go pick them up for an after school activity or when I need to go down and meet them off the bus. My afternoons are after school activities, chores such as washing the dishes and cleaning up toys, talking with them, working with them, playing with them. Their bedtime starts at 7:40, and my son gets scared if I leave before he falls asleep so I sit with him until about 8:15. As soon as he's asleep, I go fall on my face, sleep as best I can, then wake up and do it again. Overnight, it's hard to sleep deeply, because about once a week someone will wake up in the middle of the night and need help. That could be as minimal as a hug or as complex as having to completely change the bedding on a bunk bed at 2 AM while also comforting a child who is afraid they'll be in trouble, or afraid they're sick, or afraid of their nightmare, or, or, or. Further, if a child is awake, there is always noise. I usually study Chinese with two or more competing sources of noise. I read the same way. My life is loud, and active, and consists of constant interruptions.

I adore my family, and I love my children, but this is terrible for me.

I do all of this as an neurodivergent introvert. My clinical depression is at least medicated, mostly because post-partum depression after I gave birth the first time nearly drove me to suicidal in under a week (we were expecting this and were prepared, fortunately, getting help was as simple as a phone call). The constant noise and interruptions and forced socialibility are about the worst combination of home-life I could be subjected to. I spend far too many early mornings just breathing deeply and gearing myself up to be subjected to the wall of Loud, Boisterous, Needing-My-Attention that is every minute when anyone else in the house is awake.

So what did my day off look like?

I helped get the kids ready to go and did some morning chores. I'd been up at 4:30 AM so I also had already social media'd and studied. Then, while my wife finished the preparations, I started work, and I worked from about 8 am to about 4 pm, straight. I didn't get hungry so didn't bother stopping for lunch. No one interrupted me, no one asked me to look at anything they'd built, no one broke my concentration, no sounds could be heard except those I'd chosen myself.

I'd been out the day before at a local shopping street and listened closely to the things the kids said they wanted, so at 4 I grabbed a couple orders I needed to ship for work and drove to our local downtown, dropped the orders in a post box, then went back to the shops and did some Christmas shopping in the 45 minutes or so before everything closed. I think I'm basically done with what we'll get them - other bigger things will be left to grand parents - so that's a load off, I literally had a stress dream earlier this week about it being 12/24 and having forgotten to do the shopping and having to go to (oh horrors) the mall on the day before Christmas. (Reminder: I'm a Jewish atheist. It's just virtually impossible not to Holiday in the Culturally Christian Hellscape that is the US. Also, my wife is Christian. So.) Found something cute for my wife, too, even tho I already know the main thing I'm getting her. Then, I realized - one of my favorite restaurants is on that block. So. I went there. I sat by myself at a table, only the indistinct restaurant hubbub around me. I read four or five chapters of my book, and ate a savory crepe, and drank lovely fruit tea, and got a scone to-go that I'll eat for lunch today. It was more than I probably should have spent on myself - about $25, including tip - but fuck it. I only get maybe a handful of days off all year, and I'm allowed to indulge a little.

Then I came home. There were no lights on. There was no noise. I had considered doing some more merch work while watching TV on the actual television (my kids are too young for subtitled shows, so usually if I want to watch My Shows I either have to do it on my computer when they're not around, or put them on and read all the subtitles aloud while trying to keep up and process the actual meaning of what I'm reading). But when I got back, the quiet and dark was so goddamn NICE that instead I curled up on the couch and read more of my book. I did that until bedtime - still about 8:15, because I'm exhausted. Then...I went to bed. And I slept long and deep, knowing that there was no chance I'd be interrupted and woken up, I didn't have to be, even in sleep, alert to every noise and possibility that I'd be needed.

I'm still exhausted and burned out, but even one night to myself felt really, really nice.

Saying "Tumblr does X" as a universal statement is doomed to failure, but generally speaking, the parenting posts I see on Tumblr, the ones with tens or hundreds of thousands of notes, speak what's apparently widely seen as a truism on here: that unless someone wants to spend 24/7 with their kids, to be 100% emotionally available at all times, is always kind and patient and perfect, they are a bad parent, maybe even abusive. I remember when covid started, there were multiple posts actively mocking the "oh god, my kids are now home all the time, how am I supposed to do this?" attitude that a lot of parents posted in despair. WhY dId YoU hAvE kIdS iF yOu DoN't WaNt To SpEnD tImE wItH tHeM?

Look at what my usual day looks like.

Look at what my day off looked like.

Do you really think I don't want to spend time with my kids? Do you really think I don't love my kids?

But I'm not a fucking MACHINE. I'm a PERSON. That's what people on Tumblr seem to forget. PARENTS ARE PEOPLE. The same tumblrinas who post ~uwu be kind to yourself rest if you need to, you should forgive yourself for that mistake you made~ will turn around, with zero sense of irony, and post "you're a bad parent if you ever raise your voice around a child."

Expecting parents to be perfect means expecting parents to be inhuman. It also means that a parent can't be poor (can't spend all your time being the perfect parent if you have to work multiple jobs or weird hours!), can't be introverted (can't be a perfect parent if you're not completely emotional available, god forbid socializing is exhausting for you), can't be on the ADHD or autism spectrum (what do you mean you forgot to get your kid to a doctor's appointment once? what do you mean over-stimulation can make you angry? how dare you get angry at a kid!), can't be depressed (gotta get out of bed every single day, gotta always be upbeat, patient, happy, or else that's Evil), can't be (like my wife) physically disabled (what do you mean your hands hurt too much to hold a child's hand? are you denying them touch?? CRUEL). And when the only answer you can offer to that is, "if you can't be that perfect you shouldn't be a parent," then you're saying people who aren't middle class to wealthy, people who aren't neurotypical, people who aren't physically able, shouldn't have children.

And honestly...what the fuck is your problem?

I'm not perfect. I tell my kids to just leave me alone sometimes. I raise my voice, especially when one of my kids starts punching the other, but also sometimes just cause I'm exhausted and Can't Anymore. I've forgotten an appointment by accident and felt like a total fucking idiot, and I've skipped an after school activity because I just wasn't up for taking them. I've served them more unbalanced, unhealthy meals than I can count. I've made many, many mistakes, but I've also done my best, and I love my kids, and I hope that when they grow up, they'll still love me even as they recognize that I wasn't perfect, just as I've come to accept my own parents' short-comings while still loving them very much. They're people, too, and the older I get, the more I understand where they were coming from.

When I fuck up, I apologize.

When they tell me they're unhappy with something I've done, I apologize, and I try to do better. Sometimes I even succeed.

This shit is hard, yo. And it's getting harder every year.

I'm BEGGING Tumblr: you need to start seeing parents as people. The way y'all talk about parenting on here is toxic, and genuinely harmful, and frankly exhausting. You have no idea what the reality of raising kids is like, and you need to shut the entire fuck up.

I had a day off yesterday.

I might get one more before the end of 2023.

I already can't wait. I am so, so, so tired. sigh

(if you actually read this whole rant and even a single word of it resonated for you, please reblog it. I'm tired of never seeing positive posts about parenting while I see negative ones with a bajillion notes.)

everything is flowers 🌼🌹

Treat me ~ Tip me ~ More of me

discord mod riddle definitely asks a basic ass question and puts @everyone and then kicks if they dont answer 💀

@ everyone: which one of you neglected to feed the hedgehogs?

And no one responds because they are not trying to lose their heads. But then there’s you, who isn’t even in Heartslabyul dorm but got invited into the server by Ace and Deuce. And you respond happily with: I’ll come over and feed them!!! :D

You are too good for this world. Riddle loves you in the not-so-sane way. <3 he probably learns how to use Magicord just for your sake (but also so that he can turn the server into one for academic help/studying/etc before it can spiral out of control into something chaotic.

Wednesday, November 1.

NaNoWriMo.

As one door closes, another door opens. So if you are feeling a little glum, a little blue, a little crestfallen this morning, as you pack your coffins, drone-controlled ghouls, pumpkins, and Normal Human Man costumes into the attic for another year, fear not. Because the passing of October 31st can only mean the arrival of November 1st. And the arrival of this date will be exciting and daunting news for y'all in Tumblr's writing community—it's #nanowrimo. 

Keyboards, touchscreens, typewriters, pens, and quills at the ready, folks. You've got 30 days to do 50,000 words. They are not going to write themselves. 

Good luck x

Today in Hip Hop History:

A Tribe Called Quest released their debut album People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm April 10, 1990

Say click! Take a pic!