purplesweetpotatoes

drea || I've got too many obsessions at this point I don't keep track https://drea.metalabel.com/

[purplesweetpotatoes]

not enough generals falling on their swords these days

[monster1994]

happy june everybody i hope you get fucked and/or sucked this month

[kazokuhouou]

what if we don't wanna be?

[monster1994]

then i hope for peace

[my-dailydreams]

[aromantic-journal]

"everyone should get more aromantic" can appeal to tumblr's sensibilities but I genuinely think everyone should also get more asexual. I don't mean everyone stop having sex, what I mean is

Sex is not essential. You can live without it. Full stop.

Not having sex isn't shameful or a sign of failure. It also doesn't make anyone boring.

You are not entitled to having sex with anybody and nobody is entitled to having sex with you.

Sex is not what makes someone an adult.

Nobody's worth is defined by how much sex they have or don't have.

Sex is not equally important to everyone.

You can have fulfilling and happy relationships without sex.

You should only have sex on your own terms, not because you feel like you owe it to someone, or because you feel like you'd be incomplete without it.

Know your boundaries around sex and be firm about them. Know how to respect other people's boundaries.

The previous point also applies when it comes to discussing sex. If someone doesn't wanna talk about it or hear about it you have to back down.

Anything can be sexual but not everything has to be sexual.

[chaifootsteps]

Firmly convinced the world would be a better place if we started treating sex the way we'd treat any other mundane preference in life, like what kind of chips a person likes to eat with their lunch.

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[fulmionce]

I see we're learning about the flaming hot cheeto earthquake proof sarcophagus again

[liberalsarecool]

Zohran Mamdani is using New York City to show the world how progressive policies work for everyone. #DemocraticSocialist

[nattousan]

ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)

[nattousan]

and now, the birds

Birds 1 and 2/14: Red Winged Blackbird, Male and female, Agelaius phoeniceus

[nattousan]

Bird 3/14, American Robin, Turdus migratorius

[nattousan]

hoo boy, ok *out of breath*

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

this guy took me about 4 days to completely finish, all of those freakingk coverts were a bear to render

[nattousan]

speaking of obnoxious coverts:

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

the friggin stripes almost got me chat, i may not make it

[nattousan]

Madam....

[nattousan]

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

pleasantly simple to paint! next is the flickerrrrr

[nattousan]

*melts into goo*

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

nothing but pain and suffering, i'm sure hope the next bird will be much easier and with FAR less barring :)

[nattousan]

in other news, I am losing my mind hairline

[nattousan]

SHE'S DONE!!

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

[nattousan]

*does a little jig*

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹

[nattousan]

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you

[nattousan]

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

[nattousan]

thanks for the reminder, kid

[nattousan]

at long last, we've reached the end...

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

i'll see y'all soon :')

[inkedmyths]

The problem with being a Creative Person is I want to create all the things. I want to draw a little drawing. I want to write a fic. I want to write a book. I want to paint with watercolors. I want to paint with oil paints. I want to animate. I want to make something out of clay. I want to sew a dress. I want to play a song on the ukulele. I want to play a song on the cello. I want to play a song on the harp. I want to write a song. I want to write a musical. I want to make a webcomic. I want to make a video game.

I want to do EVERYTHING but I don’t have the TIME or MONEY or MOTIVATION

[purplesweetpotatoes]

15 minutes of fame? No I’m here shitposting for me and my two followers (my other account and a porn bot probably)

[fairycosmos]

apparently youre supposed to perform. they love it when you perform. but it has to be authentic. they hate it when it's not authentic. but you have to perform.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I’ve started using chewing sticks to brush my teeth and tbh I’m surprised that zero waste people aren’t all over these things.

Chewing sticks are basically sticks from specific trees that you strip some of the bark off, chew to loosen up the inner fibers, and then brush your teeth with said fibers. You cut off the fibers every other day and strip off more bark so the sticks also force you to keep replacing your toothbrush a bit better than normal ones do because you’re literally whittling them down to nothing over time.

No toothpaste required because the sticks naturally have fluoride in them and being, you know, sticks, they’re biodegradable by nature. So no plastic from the toothpaste because there is no toothpaste and no plastic from the stick because it’s a stick.

Some brands sell them wrapped in plastic but you know, not all of them do that. And you can get a reusable container to put them in when you’re not using them.

But because zero waste people are super into finding complicated ways to reduce plastic usage I was surprised I’ve never heard of these things being discussed in the zero waste YouTube channels I’ve watched. They talk about like bamboo toothbrushes and refillable toothpaste and whatnot. Not chewing sticks.

I’m using them because I can just keep one in my pocket in its little container and they’re super stiff and my gums need strengthening according to my hygienist. (Note if you decide to use these things your gums might bleed the first few times because the fibers are so stiff)

I’m not really using them for environmental reasons but they seem like the sort of thing that extreme tree huggers would like. But no, the only people using chewing sticks seem to be me and people trying to make sure they don’t accidentally swallow toothpaste during Ramadan.

[gatheringbones]

tbh a lot of my advice boils down to “hey you know that terrible horrible looming thing you’re doing your best to avoid and distract and escape as much as possible but no matter what you do it just keeps looming and looming and ruining your life”

“just, fuckign, run straight at it screaming.”

[quasarkisses]

i needed this as a background

[spectrexviiii]

[bananonbinary]

“oh no we need to practice for our fake dating” is the funniest trope to me cause like. there are so many people who force themselves into a shitty relationship they hate just because of amatonormatiivity that it’s an ingrained part of popular culture to joke about hating your partner.

which is to say, oh my god you dont need to hold hands and go on fake dates, you don’t even need to agree on a single detail of your cover story beforehand. you can literally stand 6 feet apart at all times and look profoundly uncomfortable and all anyone will think is “yikes™. not my problem”

[bananonbinary]

actually people should address this in fanfic more because “i know we could half-ass it, but i would never fake mistreat my fake husband, how dare you” is absolutely delightful

[thekijs]

New trope: fake dating for spite.

“Look, my only goal here is for our pretend relationship to be demonstrably healthier than Aunt Rita and Uncle Carl’s fifteen year, three child marriage - which means the bar is so low we probably can’t fuck this up”

[adhdedrn]

#i think this is honestly the backbone of the appeal of the fake dating trope (i am a fake dating enjoyer) #the reason why the characters put so much unnecessary effort into the fake relationship tells you so much about them #does the idea of being someone who doesn’t really care about their lover disturb them? do they secretly care a lot about their fake partner #are they a person who needs to do everything well and with care even when it’s stupid? do they just commit REALLY hard to the bit? etc etc #ADDITIONALLY another main appeal of fake dating is the characters going ‘wow this is really easy and working really well for us’ #‘our fake relationship looks (and functionally is??) better than uncle carl’s 15yr marriage’ #‘which probably means nothing. i will not think about this in depth for at least another three chapters’ #you get it. you understand. i am sorry for the in-the-tags fake dating manifesto (via @river-gale)

[ynngaa]

World broken, heart broken. I could write essays but I prefer drawing

[purplesweetpotatoes]

Sometimes I worry that I talk too much and people don’t want to listen to me and

[purplesweetpotatoes]

I finally learned who Rasputin is

[chirasul]

we got a full redbox and now we're playing go fish with the redbox movies

[chirasul]

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

a redbox makes a wonderful addition to your patio

[fishmech]

for those wondering why they're free to take now, it's because the company that made those "chicken soup for the soul" books bought them a few years ago and then completely collapsed so bad they couldn't afford to dispose of or even take the blu rays and dvds out of their kiosks all over.

so any of them is free game because they're all located on other business' property and they usually don't want to have to pay to get rid of them either. so asking the store manager usually gets you the ok to pull it out and keep it.

[chirasul]

there was a period of time right after their bankruptcy where you could put in any debit or credit card and it would spit out movies without charging you. you could even put in like an expired or deactivated card, or a visa gift card with a $0 balance, didnt matter, they'd just start spitting discs out. a lotta people raided redboxes for movies for a couple months, with some people doing what me and my brother and my dad did here, taking the whole box and signs and marquees as well. because managers sure as hell don't want a big abandoned piece of trash on their sidewalk disappointing customers. BUT they're also often too cheap to pay someone to remove it. so they just sit there.

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.

remember: the rules are made up. act like you belong there and you can get away with anything. this applies to your own life