Nepenthe

Ok. Mini-rant because I can’t contain myself atm. Do you wanna know a badly-kept secret? I’ve been making art on and off for 29 years. My ass wishes I could draw too. A ton of artists wish they could draw.

Talent will only give you a leg up, and mainly just at the beginning. The rest, all of us have to struggle for and I’m quite sure very few of us appreciate having to do so. And no matter how good they get, there is always something they have no idea how to do yet or they have some idol whose style they envy more than their own. Or they’re the type that only hates what they make because they’re the one who made it.

Van Gogh had a painter friend named Gauguin, and they were both jealous of each other. There is no magical point that one hits where you feel like you’re Good Enough. The best you can aim for is the kind of steady improvement you don’t even notice happening except on a scale of years, and the confidence to acknowledge those improvements instead of hyper-focusing on every way it isn’t what you saw in your head (it never is).

Go get a pencil or your ipad or whatever. Youtube is by far your biggest friend. Go look up videos about how to actually see what’s in front of you instead of what your brain insists must logically be there. USE REFERENCE. Trace a photo over and over, then immediately try the same thing freehand – this one is super useful, because a lot of drawing is also muscle memory. Break things down into simple shapes and then build on those. Use the open space between objects if you need to, to trick yourself into drawing something complex without getting lost in intimidating structural details.

When you’ve got those down, move onto perspective and composition. Cry a little if you have to, then get back to it. Because now you’re able to do whole backgrounds. People? Do tons of deliberately imprecise gesture drawings. Give your OC a terrifying robot head, a pillow for a torso, and springs for limbs. But go get. Your pencil. And be ok with drawing at first like everyone thinks they draw.

Barring that, my second choice is singing.

In that case, I also choose NZ 802 years ago.

When I get deeply emotionally attached to my data analyst, I might care if they’re moonlighting on the side. Sex, work or not, is still an emotional topic for most of the human race and it’s not new knowledge to anyone.

Enough that it would not naturally occur to me that “please do not engage in prostitution while we’re together” needs to be said out loud. I will casually ask if you’re monogamous and if you say yes, that’s how monogamy works.

Even aside from that, yeah, tbh, I would consider it good form to let your partner know you’re considering a new job regardless, just so they generally know what’s going on. If you have to hide it, maybe something is wrong.

Ok, explain. Link me. I’ve been turning this over in my head. I cannot fathom what “fabric artist trading card” could possibly be

This is acceptable. I love chicken and hate Ted Cruz

I personally would love to do almost all of those things. I wouldn’t want to do them as a job. There is an ocean of difference between doing something because it’s enjoyable and doing it because if I ever stop for any reason, I will starve to death in a ditch. Tends to kill the fun.

My ideal job would be chilling out as a professional student, splitting my time between large amounts of socializing and various crafting hobbies that are not stressful because my ability to live does not depend on them. Might even take up an instrument. Wouldn’t play it for anyone, I just like learning things more than I like anything else. Which is not monetizable.

Barring that, whatever allows me the most time to do so without making me miserable. Beyond the basic amount required to survive, life isn’t about money. Life is life.

I assume it all works the same on mastodon, if it’s showing up ok, so:

• Bold is 2 asterisks on either side
like ** this **

• Italics is either one asterisk on each side like * this * or underscores _ like this _ (does this show up italicized for you?)

• Strikethrough is ~~ two tildes ~~ and looks like this

Obviously just remove the spaces in between the symbols and letters, because I can’t figure out yet how to stop markdown from working on here any other way, in order to depict it precisely

You asked for doughy buns, you got doughy buns

If you can pull it off, you have my blessing. Better post it when you’re done, though.

I’ve been on discord for almost a decade, lmao. Appreciate it. Unfortunately, my experience with “a discord for every hobby:”

• Two thousand general servers. Your theme is 18+, furry, 6th grade goth/weeb, or all three.

• Remainder don’t have a description, or don’t have a name/description that’s at all explanatory.

• Whatever server you do join will either start out snubbing the newcomer (dealing with that now), will already be dead (half my list), or WILL, without question or exception, die in 6-12 months (the other half).

The last time I went looking for hobby groups, the only server in existence I could find for one of my favorite games seemed active as hell, and was entirely in a language I wouldn’t be able to converse in. I’m still upset like a year later.

I also think, generally, it hits a spot that’s close to that, but it’s not quite that, in large part for the server lifespan thing. They’re expected to be more stable, but because of that, joining them feels like a bigger commitment than popping into a random AIM chat for 2 secs. Leaving one is a big statement.

I’m curious whether this might be a reason places just end up as a husk instead of seeing new blood like a revolving door like one would have expected.

There’s a whole server-specific atmosphere sometimes, some of them have miles of updating rules and other have none. I joined one semi-recently that had a trigger board paragraphs long and while I would be fine with any one of those individually, I was amused and horrified to find the specific combination of member-submitted triggers left me completely unable to talk about my life.

90% of my existence, past and present, was upsetting to someone, and all I could do was talk about birds or something and send extremely careful memes while I waited to be yelled at.

Everyone’s known each other for a while but the standard format REALLY doesn’t lend itself to in-depth discussion as much as it does to chatting, which pushes the subject higher out of sight. Meaning the usual scenario is a place for a bunch of longtime friends to get together and talk, as long as they’re talking about absolutely nothing of import. Which is fine for a good while.

Creating threads is a thing now, but I’ve never seen anyone use them aside from to harass a user or see what they did, and no one wants the amount of threads a forum typically has, crammed into a discord menu.

I’m not aiming for slander, if I couldn’t stand it I wouldn’t have been in it for so long. But it really is the bastard love child of forums and chat and the combination carries some drawbacks if you’re hoping for either one.

I still remember a video I found a year ago that was just barely over a whole minute. It was a guy doing one single really clear cable stitch in complete silence, and then the video cuts out.

I do not know who they are, but I will vouch for that man before god.

Doing a cursory search to see if I can find it again, the second video suggested to me is 26:44 long.

I always liked the dial-up sound. I don’t know why it’s so often reviled. Yes, it sounds like multiple minutes of demonic screeching being played backwards, but it was my demonic screeching. It was the sound that meant you were about to have fun.

Oh. My god. Why did I never know about that. That would have been incredible. I feel honestly robbed now T_T

And then you would openly answer that you were ten. And then a 16yr old would offer to date you on Runescape.

I actually really miss topic-oriented chat rooms. I know they don’t seem to be liked/used at all whenever a site adds the ability, but back during AIM they were really the coolest.

I thought it was so fun to just go see what kinds of rooms someone had opened that day, or sit and listen to people. I could talk to complete strangers about my hobbies and we would even learn from each other, and often continue talking for months to a year.

I wasn’t exactly allowed to have friends, or in fact even speak to non-family, so the ability to socialize like that so often in my free time and then eventually come to know regulars at a favorite forum meant everything to me.

This was also way before all this shit, when (at least in my neck of the woods) being as clear and civil as possible, accepting nuance, and providing viewpoints/links were considered far more important than “whoever incites the mob first doesn’t get doxxed.”

I credit what debating skills I have entirely to the amount of time spent lurking on the forum and watching two specific users fight each other every time they met.

Now let’s get to the part you’ve waiting for: I’m going to play through the entire thirty minutes worth of level four before you get to the demon door and I will stop to make useless commentary on the bad guys you encounter.

About a month ago, I’d gotten back to replaying Suikoden Tactics, and there’s this whole quest-accepting mechanic that’s the easiest way to rack up skill points. But one of them is a series of “go get X out of the murder death ruins for me.”

That place is pure ass and permadeath is a thing, so I’m not just going to go jaunting down to the final floor because I’m bored. And for the life of me, I could not remember which floor whatever item was even on in order to know whether it was worth trying for right now.

This game is old enough that there are almost no discussions about it. I’m rooting through abandoned forums from 2005 looking for gems. God bless forums from 2005 btw.

Somehow, there is a single video on this subject. It is a series of videos as the youtuber fights through the entire dungeon in one go. There is commentary. There are no timestamps. He does not split the videos according to floor. The information I’m looking for is somewhere in here, but I have zero guarantee he’s even treasure hunting, so he may not mention it.

I could have cried.

I was all set to start bitching about the obligatory 10-15 minutes of “older, medicated suburban housewife shows off her whole yarn closet, every needle, which needle she likes (it’s just pretty), her fingernails, pushes her state-mandated store, and then finishes off with an internet recipe story about how her gramgram was fleeing the war and had to knit jasmine stitch backwards to survive…before fucking up the stitch and never editing that part out. But it’s ok because her hands were in the way the whole time anyway.”

But I think you’ve found the only thing that has me beat.

I will at least use this time to implore any knitting/crochet peeps on the fediverse that if you or someone you love is uploading how-to videos anywhere on the web…SHOW ME THE DAMN STITCH SO I CAN LEAVE. I HAVE PROJECTS, I DO NOT CARE.

That is definitely Ohio. But if we construct hard enough, I truly believe my city can assimilate Ohio like we’re close to devouring our surrounding towns

By topic, in order of how likely I am to immediately click on their video if I see a new one:

D&D:
• Viva La Dirt League D&D
(Including hammy greenscreen reenactments! Beyond hilarious. Top of the list. My god.)

Skits:
• Viva La Dirt League (gaming)
• Dr. Glaucomflecken (medicine)
• Ryan George

• Paint (parody music)
• MTGRemy (Magic: The Gathering parody music)
• Brian David Gilbert (music)

• Fire Department Chronicles
• Steven He (being Asian)
• Daniel Thrasher

Interesting/horrible facts:
• Casual Geographic
• Tom Scott
• Kurzgesagt

Movies:
• Pitch Meeting
• CinemaTherapy (psychology of movies)

Psychiatry (gaming bent):
• HealthyGamerGG

History:
• Tierzoo (prehistory if it were an MMO)
• Linfamy (Japanese)
• Fall of Civilizations (all 1-3hrs long but great)
• Townsends (US colonial)
• Shadiversity (medieval)

Gaming:
• The Escapist (zero punctuation)
• JelloPlaysGames
• Razbuten (highly recommend checking out his “Gaming for a Non-Gamer” series)

Art (chill):
• Sultan Sketches
• LavenderTowne
• ABD Illustrates

Art (tutorial):
• David Finch
• Bobbo Andonova
• Winged Canvas

Misc:
• OwlKitty (cat greenscreened into movie trailers)
• Exurb1a (emotionally distressing prose)
• LegalEagle (lawyer drama)

• JelloApocalyse (misc/gaming, can genuinely recommend the hilarity of a video about lemonade reviews, of all things. His delivery is fantastic.)

• b2studios (programming fun)
• Huggbees (“How It’s Made” parodies)
• The Onion

Half the players seem to get a manual about a completely different game? I read and reread that very thoroughly before going for a hyper-wisdom support build, and apparently that’s just not even a class anyone wants?

Everyone keeps saying how integral they are to survival, why is healer class actively punished whenever they get in a 10ft radius of interacting with another player? I’ve completely ditched defense for this and it’s just unplayable now without starting over.

Decide what this this place is supposed to be or take it out of the options and admit it’s a street fighter clone.

As always, South Carolina is a cringey little copycat