she just wants to kiss all the pretty girls

this just in: apparently, you can romance the big demon lady. i have been putting off fighting karlach bc she sounded so scary. i have been DEPRIVED-

abigail showing hannibal how to use emojis!

a silly comic made from @willgrahamscock's ask post.

Ten questions to ask a friend who just read your novel

Here are ten questions to ask that will not put your friend in a tough spot, but will still give you some useful input on your novel:

1. At what point did you feel like “Ah, now the story has really begun!”  2. What were the points where you found yourself skimming?  3. Which setting in the book was clearest to you as you were reading it? Which do you remember the best?  4. Which character would you most like to meet and get to know?  5. What was the most suspenseful moment in the book?  6. If you had to pick one character to get rid of, who would you axe?  7. Was there a situation in the novel that reminded you of something in your own life?  8. Where did you stop reading, the first time you cracked open the manuscript? (Can show you where your first dull part is, and help you fix your pacing.)  9. What was the last book you read, before this? And what did you think of it? (This can put their comments in context in surprising ways, when you find out what their general interests are. It might surprise you.)  10. Finish this sentence: “I kept reading because…”

Your friend is probably still going to tell you, “It was good!” However, if you can ask any specific questions, and read between the lines, you can still get some helpful information out of even the most well-meaning reader.

Source: Examiner

This is really useful advice, especially if the person you’ve shared your story with hasn’t had much/any experience critiquing. 

It does a great job of asking for a balance of both positive and negative feedback in a way that’s comfortable for both the author and reader. 

Ooh, these are excellent, and I have a hell of a time coming up with good questions to get more than a cycle of “I liked it!” “Great, what did you like about it?” “…It was good?”

love the x-files having the most BATSHIT promo photos

just weird af.

it's like the photo shoots were themselves an x-files about a possessed photographer but nobody stopped him

"Why can't the freaks on AO3 just go and make a site for all the gross stuff and leave AO3 alone."

Because AO3 is that site. Because AO3 was that site long before you decided AO3 was better than the sites you bullied us off of before, and I can promise you if someone somehow comes up with a fanfic site you like better specifically for the 'gross stuff' you'll try to bully us off that too so you can benefit from it.

AO3's specific core purpose is to preserve fanfiction, yes, but it was also instigated as a host site for the fanfiction that kept getting yeeted off other platforms like Wattpad. Its designed to preserve all fanfiction, not just the fanfiction you, personally, think is 'allowed' to be written.

AO3 is the site for all the gross stuff the freaks make. We've been there just as long as you. We've been funding it just as long as you have. AO3 has specifically said you have a place here. The timeline was literally:

Wattpad/FF.net/LiveJournal purge fanfics > AO3 is born > The people who's fics got purged moved over to AO3 > AO3 gains popularity as the best functioning site > The people who pushed for the fics to be purged off Wattpad move to AO3 > The same people try to push for AO3 to purge fics.

AO3's source coding is open-access. You go make a polished, strict, rigid site where nothing 'icky' is allowed. You go make a site where you can control what is hosted. We already have our space.

Billy Hargrove was an asshole but if you were a 17 year old boy who’s abused by your dad and was just moved 2000 miles across the country after the start of your senior year and had an annoying little sister wouldn’t you also be sort of a bitch. isn’t it within your rights as a human being to be a menace to society at some point

i had someone argue with me on tw*tt*r on my own thread about why billy hargrove deserves empathy. iirc “he deserved to die because of how he treated max”, they didn’t feel sorry for him at all, and anyone who liked him was probably an abuser too.

i remember thinking, really? a 17 year old who is physically abused by his father, no mom, no friends (aka NO SUPPORT SYSTEM), one pair of knockoff converse and one not-even-close-to-warm-enough-for-Indiana jacket (i could go on and on about billy’s wardrobe showing us how he’s neglected) with a fear bite response the size of jupiter? you think that kid deserved to die?

like i know he was, in fact, a POS. (and also isn’t really alive). but. reading that a minor child deserved to die was very eye-opening for me about how a lot of people see a very black-and-white world and are not capable of a nuanced view of things.

““The Great Pacific Garbage Patch can now be cleaned,” announced Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, the wonderkid inventor who’s spent a decade inventing systems for waterborne litter collection.

Recent tests on his Ocean Cleanup rig called System 002, invented to tackle the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic pollution, were a success, leading Slat to predict that most of the oceanic garbage patches could be removed by 2040.

Intersections of ocean currents have created the massive floating islands of plastic trash—five slow-moving whirlpools that pull litter from thousands of miles away into a single radius.

The largest one sits between California and Hawaii, and 27-year-old Slat has been designing and testing his systems out there, launching from San Francisco since 2013.

GNN has reported on his original design for the floating device, but his engineering team improved upon it. System 002, nicknamed “Jenny,” successfully netted 9,000 kilograms, or around 20,000 pounds in its first trial.

It’s carbon-neutral, able to capture microplastics as small as 1 millimeter in diameter, and was designed to pose absolutely no threat to wildlife thanks to its wide capture area, slow motion, alerts, and camera monitors that allow operators to spy any overly-curious marine life…

Slat estimates ten Jennies could clean half the garbage patch in five years, and if 10 Jennies were deployed to the five major ocean gyres, then 90% of all floating plastic could be removed by 2040.” -via Good News Network, 10/19/21

How much you wanna bet the State of California will “prohibit” use of this system, because “reasons.”

If it’s in international waters they can’t do anything about it. And I’m pretty sure the federal government decides what can and can’t go on off our coasts too, not local or state.

Slat has been working on this since he was literally a child. I remember the first posts, articles, and I think there was even a fundraising campaign at one point.

I am so, so proud of him holy shit.

^^^ me too!! I remember the first news yeaaars ago that some kid had thought up a brilliantly simple method of cleaning up the oceans, and even that first prototype was amazingly efficient in solving a problem that the grownup world seemed to have given up on. It was so simple I couldn’t believe no scientist or engineer had thought of it before.

And he’s just been refining it and making it better and better? Amazing news!

Well done, sir, well done and thank you <3

My big memory of this is that every time he sent out a prototype, people would overwhelmingly go “AH HA! See? It didn’t work as advertised because a storm broke it/it didn’t filter as much as he predicted/etc.”

And every time, Boyan would analyse what went wrong, tinker with it, and send a stronger version back out.

There are still issues with it, like, but this guy isn’t some shitty billionaire - he’s a normal man walking the walk to clean up an international problem that everyone else is just wringing their hands over. I have no clue why everyone is desperately waiting for him to fail. He’s picked his hill, and he plods along, and if the latest design hasn’t met expectations, he creates a new one.

Their website is here, btw, in case anyone wants to have a look; they still accept donations

Lol whoops THIS is the website

this is crazy holy shit !!! good news everyone !!! he actually did it !!!!!!!

Non binary office bat boogie!

Better viewing here

This is probably my most well known embroidery animation. The main goal with this one was to see how complex I could make a character design in this medium and still have it be feasible to make. The answer is: about this complex, lol. After this one I began bringing in bits of fabric so that I could still have complex designs but make things a little faster for myself.

The ideal self

I had a thought and quickly half-assed it.

y’all know it’s based off that one meme

‘You two, quit pouting and smile with your brother.”

“Firstborn Grandson”

I've got a string of memes that I NEED so prepare. This blog is turning into serious/meme avatar.

He's Toruk Makto.

Is this not how this scene went?

“I’m almost done. Will you wear it, Momma?”

“Of course, my baby. Always.”

Neteyam loves beading and crafting and finds it calming. Neytiri also loves braiding her sons hair. Nice alternative to high energy training.

Damn I set myself up for it where I gotta draw Neytiri mourning with some horrendous jewelry made by 11 year old Neteyam dont I.

anyway if this boy don’t get resurrected by kiri I will raise hell.

also these characters change each time I draw them idk I don’t go for consistency I go for therapeutic