not to be rude but some of y'all need to look on the bright side sometimes. like, yeah sure the world is fucked and people suck and we all die whatever, sure, but like. go outside.
i'm not saying the cure for depression is touching grass. however, if you surround yourself with sad things and talk about how terrible life is and how much you're suffering and never take a breath and remember it's not all bad, you'll end up making yourself worse.
like, i've been diagnosed with clinical depression, and anxiety, and insomnia, and chronic pain, and a million other things that get in the way of me having a simple fucking good day, but you know what?
i watch videos that make me happy and wear pretty clothes and cut my hair in fun styles and do my makeup and drink strawberry tea and take two showers a day and i look on the bright side because goddamnit if god is trying to break me down, he'll have to try harder.
i see so many people talk about how sad they are, who make their depression their first priority, and i get it, i really do, but you know that is actively harming your mental state, right? please, just do something nice for yourself, think positively for one day. i promise things get better when you step back and breathe.
happiness is not an achievable permanent state of being like "one day I'll be happy" it's a temporary, fluctuating feeling just like anger and sadness. the more water you give it the more it can bloom, even if only sometimes.
A Book of Creatures by @a-book-of-creatures doesn't update these days but is another thing along these lines, really huge, fully illustrated all by the author and cites all sources
-Tamsyn said there will be “a wedding” in Alecto (admittedly a long time ago)
-She also said, more recently, that in Alecto Ianthe “does something really bad”
-Harrow still owes Ianthe the favor of the chain
-“Someday I’ll marry that girl,” [Ianthe] said aloud. “Maybe it’ll be good for her.”
-This series is Chekhov’s gun city, population: everybody
In conclusion. I feel that there is a non-zero chance of a Harrianthe wedding in Alecto. If this happens I will of course crawl under my desk and scream. That is all.
Just spent a long time replying to an anon who asked me about how to improve at anatomy and likeness, and then tumblr just decided to delete my answer </3, so I'm just gonna make a proper post out of it.
My biggest advice for improvement is to just get really, really, REALLY obsessed with something and then draw this certain thing non-stop until your hands fall off (please don't, do your stretches). Of course, doing proper anatomy studies is super important, too, but the second you decide to follow your heart and draw that yaoi ship that won't let you rest 24/7, you will see improvement in no time. And when you do sit down to do those boring studies? Draw your favorite character shirtless. Make those boring studies fun!
Here's some anatomy books I highly recommend:
Anatomy for Sculptors
Drawing Pose & Form
Every single Morpho book
These books have been the most helpful to me, especially Anatomy for Sculptors! Highly recommend just religiously copying every page from it. (These books can be found as free pdfs online, you do not have to purchase the physical version unless you want to. I know they're not exactly cheap.)
Here's some helpful websites/programs for studies:
Line of Action
Insanely helpful website with lots of study material. They even have an integrated timer and randomizer for all their reference material!
Grafit Studio on Gumroad
They offer a huge amount of anatomy reference packs of all kinds of poses and people. I've been using their reference for my studies for years! They do cost a little bit, but they also have a bunch of free test packs.
GestureDrawing!
A timer and randomizer for your references! Works the same as the one from Line of Action, though with this program you can use your own references.
How to capture likeness:
It's incredibly easy to fall victim to "same-face-syndrome" but how does one avoid it?
Do studies of all kinds of faces! Old faces, young faces, asymetrical faces, round faces, long faces, square faces etc. You gotta draw faces that might not fall into our modern understanding of "beauty". I know, drawing conventionally hot people is super fun, I enjoy it as well, but if you want to improve at capturing likeness, you gotta understand all the little details that make a human face unique. Those deep wrinkles around someone's eyes, that little bump on someone's nose, that nice fullness to someone's cheeks. There's so much beautiful uniqueness to human faces, I highly recommend properly studying them. Look at an actor you like or a friend/partner you love and figure out in detail what makes their face the way it is, and try to think about how you would capture them on paper.
It's also incredibly important to understand the structure of a face. Where do the muscles sit that cause all of our expressions and how do they influence each other? What does the structure of the skull actually look like?
Here's two youtube tutorials that go into this more:
How I learned to draw better faces in a week by pikat
How I study heads/faces by Ullaiin
I really hope this was helpful! My inbox is always open for more questions! ❤️
It's interesting to see conversations about Harrowhark and gender, because she definitely does not fit into our traditional gender binary, but on the Ninth she conforms to the norms. She's a bald, grumpy nun like everybody else.
Necro/Cav relationships have more bearing on Dominicus society than gender relations (as seen by Harrow's conversation with Abigail and Magnus) and that coupled with the fact that there is a very complicated Dominicus social system Muir did not explain; being a necro, a cav or a normal citizen is basically akin to a secondary gender.
So in this post we discuss how John Gaius invented alpha beta omega dynamics....
"There's no hope for the future." And that's how they felt during the Atomic Age, during the World Wars, during the Enlightenment Revolutions, during thr plagues, during the Viking raids, during the fall of Rome.
Been feeling a bit hopeless of late. Wasn't expecting to stumble across a quote that would fundamentally alter my perspective and make me cry during my lunch break but here we are
Pre-menstrual depression is always depicted as like "He He! I had a box of icecream bars and cried while watching the Titanic!" But in reality, it's more like, "I'm standing the edge of an abyss. There is nothing good inside of me, I'm filled with rage and desperation."
It's crazy that being told how to deal with that is never a part of anyone's menstrual sex education.
This has already been said in the notes, but if PMS causes extreme depression and even suicidal ideation, that is in fact something that most people do not experience and it can be treated
Like for the majority it really is "oh i'm hungrier and moodier than usual"
^this should be a part of sex education so the point still stands
I went to my doctor after I was walking to work one morning and saw a bus coming and actually took a step to throw myself in front of it before I pulled myself together. Later that day I started bleeding and was literally like someone flipped a switch and I didn't feel suicidal anymore. Which made me feel like I was loosing my mind because who goes from 'I want to throw myself in front of a bus' to 'I'm perfectly fine' just like that? I did some research, I went to the doctor and described my feelings, he looked me in the eye and gently asked what I thought it was, I said I'd read about PMDD and I thought it might be that, he said 'I think so too' and wrote a prescription.
If, before you get your period, you feel furiously angry, suicidal, irritated by every tiny thing to the point you want to murder someone, stuck in a black hole you'll never escape from. If you are experiencing extreme emotions for what seems like no good reason, especially if you get your period and those extreme emotions just go away. You're probably not just PMSing , you may have PMS's feral big sister PMDD and it's treatable.
Also this is something that can develop as you get older. So if you used to get normal PMS but what I wrote above sounds more like your norm now then don't just write it off as regular PMS.
i feel disgruntled by the amount of people who didn't like the ending of good omens & call it " egregiously out of character " for aziraphael & crowley & unfortunately i need to offer my thoughts about it
obvious disclaimer but you're entitled to voice whatever opinion you have about the finale. please know this isn't me trying to come in swinging at strangers about something i just learned about this month.
that said however, having just binged the entirety of the series, i can't help but think that a majority of the fandom that's " anti good omens 3 " - wow by the way, is driven predominantly by rage at the series not ending the way they wanted it to rather than the quality of the season itself being off, & i promise there's a difference.
good omens 3 spoilers below ;;
granted, i say this acknowledging that s3 was largely condensed due to constraints & therefore the pacing might have been a bit fast, but i see less people complaining about that & more about the characterization. nevertheless, worth mentioning.
it just boggles my mind when i see people coming up with all kinds of excuses as to why aziraphale & crowley wouldn't have sacrificed themselves because they love each other so much.
& i just have to ask- did we watch the same series? where time & time again, they stuck their own necks out & risked their wellbeings to save humanity from unfair divine punishment? joh & his children, armageddon 1, etc? the entire show has revolved around crow & azzy hearing the demands of god & taking pause or holding reluctance when they think about how that's going to affect the humans involved, from few to all of the world's population.
they struggle with maintaining their rigid roles as a " good angel " & " evil demon " when their core beliefs are challenged by their respective sides. crowley fell SPECIFICALLY because he challenged god's whims when he found the things she was doing questionable or unfair. aziraphale is looked down upon by his fellow angels by trying to uphold a utilitarian philosophy & not just following the grain.
TELL ME THEN, why it is that - after all of that, you would assume that crowley & aziraphale would choose each other, at the end of the world where nothing remains, over there being a chance of restoring humanity - without all the divine forces that threatened it's chances beforehand?
& i'm not saying they didn't DEEPLY care for each other, but it's a core part of their characters that they just as DEEPLY care about the state of humanity! this is why they are outcasts of their respective sides! because they view people with value where heaven & hell view humanity as obstacles or pawns.
i've seen people go " oh but crowley would / has mowed down a handful of people for aziraphale's sake, what makes you think he wouldn't take out the whole world for him "
all of humanity & life on earth > a handful of people threatening their lives / mission to Preserve humanity. like, what
i also see people argue that they could have rewritten the book of life & as nice as an idea as that would be... i don't think that's at all feasible? the book of life had a page dedicated to everything in existence, correct? the angels have walked the earth for hundreds of years, but still don't know everything there ever was - at least to the extent that god would have. i don't think they could possibly document it all & set everything back to relatively the way it was, or even make it decent! ( &, mind you, this is just assuming that writing in the bookshop's blank books would have worked to restore it all / they had the divine power to DO so, which seems unlikely ) they still have to be coached on acknowledging their emotions & faults & even the names of simple objects sometimes, but sure - they could restore the world themselves & run it.
but then free will, which they've fought for since the beginning, wouldn't exist. the point of getting rid of gods & heaven / hell was to erase the divine forces that wrote the world like a story & directed every chapter, treating humanity - once more, like obstacles or pawns, bent to follow these strict roles & rules that everyone is born into & has to adhere with no choice at all. should the angels / demons disobey, they're obliterated, & humanity is damned if they are not deemed " good " by a corporately-run heaven.
as established numerous times, crowley nor aziraphale are the pure pinnacles of good nor evil, they are not the " exception ", they couldn't create a world better than their predecessors just because they happened to go against their obviously tarnished will. further, the point is that humanity is not lorded over by ANYONE.
it's sort of like if the government as we know it were completely obliterated & we let people live by simpler laws but those laws were still mandated / created by one person that was deemed " good enough " to do it. what was the point of abolishing the government to begin with, do you think it'll be different because some " good person " is running it now? do you think they'll remain an unchanging beacon of goodness for the rest of their lives?
alternatively noted; " they could have asked god to restore the world as it was, " & then they'd be in the same situation with a divine hierarchy, constantly threatening war with each other, humanity stuck inbetween as an ineffable casualty, with likely the same end of the world outcome still fated to happen. maybe crowley & aziraphale would still exist, but for how long? the world would still end so long as there was still a prideful heaven or hell & AGAIN, do you really think they'd put themselves before the whole humanity when their entire roles in the show revolve around being subversions to what their sides want - which is total destruction of such for the sake of their own individual prides?
also people who think s3's ending is some kind of queer erasure or whatever are making me develop tumors, i am not even going to dignify responding to the thought.*
anyway my eyes are growing heavy because i sat upright in bed at 7am to write this so here's just some rehash i typed out on discord that maybe sounds more coherent than any of this
again, have your feelings on the series finale, but i'd really think about projecting your opinion as matter-of-fact & for the love of god can some of you start making more fanart. why am i seeing more hate than fanart, can you put that passion somewhere more creatively
*i'm a demon i lied
i was replying to something a friend said where THEIR friend said that the physical erasure of aziraphale & crowley was comparable to the erasure of queerness from the current state of our world, --v
all i want for 2026 is that gigantic rancid AI bubble to finally burst in such a catastrophic way that the consequences will be so good and i'll never have to see another AI generated image ever again
Imagine finding out you have 90 minutes to tie up a love story that's developed over thousands of years. You create something beautifully in character and completely on point for the plot. You pay homage to the original writer's legacy in a fitting and poetic way and create an ending that not only shows the depth of two people's love for each other but the wider love they have for the thing that brought them together in the first place.
And then you go online to find the loudest outcry is that everyone hates it and "THEY DIDN'T EVEN KISS!"
I feel sorry for people who didn't get anything out of that stunning finale.
