the best trope in media is: “characters turn on the lights, see the monster, and immediately turn the lights back off”

A WangNingXian thing that I don’t see much but go feral for every time is Lan Wangji slowly progressing from having his extremely complicated tangle of emotions re: Their Song being the song WWX used to soothe Wen Ning, and apparently he doesn’t even realize it, and Wei Ying is Alive he’s alive he’s here he’s alive again and he’s playing Lan Wangji’s love song to him for his goddamn pet zombie—

Into being high key weird and tender horny about exactly that. Lan Wangji wrote the song that brought Wen Ning back from the brink. Wei Ying played it but Lan Wangji taught it to him. He wrote it for Wei Ying and then Wei Ying used it to save Wen Ning which means in a way that Lan Wangji saved Wen Ning. It’s THEIR song. It’s for all of them. Wen Ning starts humming wangxian quietly one night and Lan Wangji climbs over a table to bite the veins in his neck about it.

truly wild how driving really does become like piloting a mech after a while. like it sounds so car-bro-y but the car genuinely does become like an extension of your body. your muscles are simply making the correct micro-movements to perfectly manouvre a giant piece of machinery through a constantly moving maze while your brain is busy singing karaoke. you can physically feel when a gap is too small for your car-sona to fit through, like a cat putting its whiskers into a crevice. your brain is suddenly able to do on-the-fly s=d/t calculations in a milisecond and tell you exactly how quickly you need to move to avoid an oncoming vehicle while turning across the road. why does driving unlock the unused 89% of my brain

What the hell.

Is that what driving is for most people? I looked in the notes expecting to see a bunch of bewildered reactions but everyone is agreeing with OP and it's not that I don't believe you, but like.

I drove for years and hated every second of it because I was constantly aware of the fact that I was in charge of a massive chunk of speeding steel and glass capable of causing death if I sneezed at the wrong moment. Not for a single second did the car feel like a part of me. Driving always felt deeply unnatural and highly dangerous. It is indeed Wild to think that the vast majority of people apparently smoothly mind-meld with their car.

No wonder I hate driving so much. Everyone else is having a fun Carsona drift experience while I'm strapped into the pilot seat of a complicated memory game whose penalty for losing is dismemberment.

#mental health 101#oof to copper#but yes#most people use music memory#our brains are designed#for tool use in a way#that permits physical mapping#to anything attached to our bodies#whether it's a sword#a prosthesis or#entire ass vehicle#I will wince or duck#if I veer too close#to things with my llv#because that's my head or shoulder#not the roof or mirror arm

Me for the last 15 years: Starting a timer when you have to wait for something or stand in line can be helpful, because no matter how impatient you feel you can check the timer and remind yourself it has not been several eternities and has in fact only been five minutes.

Me setting a timer when I got to bag claim just now: I'm so clever! I will now be reminded that it's only been five minutes and bag claim usually takes about twenty!

Me looking at the timer thoughtfully: ...another Very Neurotypical Moment With Sam, it appears.

FTR it was 17 minutes from "arriving at the bag claim" to claiming my bag, so right on time.

Someone tagged this post "#it’s all fun n games until baggage check takes over an hour" which is 100% legit; a common sentiment in notes is that sometimes you don't want to know how long something has taken. But that is one of the reasons I started doing the stopwatch thing in the first place!

On the one hand, timing something is about reminding myself "No, it's only been five minutes," but it is ALSO about knowing when something is taking way longer than it should.

If I'm put into an exam room in a doctor's office, I start a timer. Because I have been forgotten about in a doctor's office before, I get nervous that I'll just be sat in there forever, and the timer tells me "No, they haven't forgotten you, it's only been 10 minutes." But it also tells me if I have been there longer than appropriate (generally more than 40 minutes) so that I know when it's justifiable to flag down a nurse to find out what's going on.

At bag claim, because I know it usually takes about 20 minutes to get my bag, I don't get concerned until the timer passes the 20 minute mark without any bags appearing. At that point I know I need to take off my headphones and start paying attention -- looking at signage, maybe asking someone if I'm at the right carousel. Maybe don't worry yet, but start double-checking. Perhaps the delay is unavoidable and it'll just be an hour, but at least, having asked, I KNOW it'll be an hour, and the timer will tell me when the hour is past and I should maybe check in again.

Now, if the bags do start showing up before 20 minutes but my bag hasn't shown up by the 40 minute mark, I know that again it's time to put my head on a swivel, and at the 50 minute mark it's time to go speak to someone in the baggage claim office. This has more than once helped me locate my bag when it's accidentally been sent to the wrong part of the airport. There is no point at which, without the timer, I would go "man this is taking a long time" and then actually go ask, because I wouldn't actually know how long it had been.

The timer both prevents me from worrying before I need to and tells me when to start worrying -- essentially, because I'm both perpetually impatient and also infinitely patient, I've outsourced my patience to a stopwatch. And because I time a lot of things, I now know the average time a lot of things take, which helps me calibrate my concerns appropriately. Ten minutes is a long time to wait for a burger from McDonalds, but it's actually on the short end of the time it takes to get a burger from Shake Shack. It's not a long time to be on hold with the HR office of my old employer, but it's longer than I'd usually be on hold with my pharmacy. Et cetera.

I know I say this all the time but I still find it hilarious that I didn't know I had ADHD until I was forty years old.

just want to add that I've started timing myself doing everyday chores and tasks and having a more realistic, personalized idea of how long things take has helped a lot with my time blindness.

I only just started, and it's not yet habitual, so there's only a small bit of info, but it's already made it easier to avoid rushing or getting stuck in waiting mode because it takes out a lot of the guesswork.

And it lets me have grace for myself when something is really taking it out of me. I'm right, this *is* taking forever and it isn't usually this hard, so what's going on? Do I need to rest? Eat? Did I forget my meds? Am I overwhelmed? Etc.

I feel like a scientist gathering and applying data.

Showers on typical days only take "about ten minutes" (me, 2025), therefore, I CAN shower before my appointment that's two hours away.

Contrary to popular belief, doing a quick tidy takes "less than half an hour" (me, 2026) and will not take the better part of a day. I don't need to dread or put it off because I can start a 20min episode and I'll be done before the credits roll.

The proposed estimate of "10-30 miserable minutes in the cold when the warm blankets are right there" (time blindness and depression, 2024), is erroneous, and based on pre-medicated data. As tempting as it is to go straight back to bed after peeing, my research shows that brushing teeth, including "prep and cleanup," rarely takes more than four minutes and may even improve morale and momentum when getting up for the day.

This is awesome and hey guess what: you ARE a scientist gathering and applying data!

I'm super proud of you and everyone who is working to keep their lives together in the face of disability and the general horrors of the world right now. Keep up the great work! And if things slip a little that's ok too. None of us are perfect. Just keep taking notes...for SCIENCE!

Hated by God…… loved by me

Reblog this to tell the person you reblogged it from that you'd missed them if they left this hell site.

In the 80’s as computer animation was on the rise one of the thorniest problems was “how do we get this thing we made on the computer… OFF the computer?” There were a lot of unique solutions, but the one I’m fascinated by most is Disney’s solution of using a plotter.

A plotter acted as sort of a 3D printer but for 2D images. There was a ball point pen that could move up and down, and the paper underneath could be moved in and out. Using CAD based programs you could plot points in 2D space and the plotter would draw the lines between them and even do geometric shapes!

When it came time to do The Great Mouse Detective, the animators at Disney wanted to do more dynamic shots for the climatic battle inside Big Ben. Drawing all those gears and cogs would be a nightmare for the animators, so they experimented with using 3D animation.

But this was still the early 80’s. There was no digital ink and paint program, no way to merge the 2D animated characters with the 3D animated backgrounds digitally. So how did they get the 3D animated backgrounds out of the computer?

By drawing each frame on the plotter.

Every frame was printed out on the plotter, and then xeroxed onto animation cels, and then hand painted like traditional 2D animation cels are.

But why the plotter? If they were gonna have to export every frame anyway, why not use a printer? Well… because printers back then just weren’t very good. A plotter uses points and physically draws the line between them, much like how vector graphics work. It yielded a much smoother and higher fidelity line than if they just printed them out.

This was still a massive undertaking, but it was probably the best solution to getting the dynamic camera moves they wanted out on paper. 2D animation was drawn over top and then both layers of animation cels were filmed frame by frame.

And that’s how you got dynamic shots like this in the mid 80’s! 3D animated backgrounds, printed with a plotter, xeroxed onto animation cels, hand painted, and then re-photographed with the 2D animation on top!

This technique would be the standard way Disney got their 3D animation out of the computer for their 2D films… right up until The Rescuers Down Under which was the first fully digital animated feature. That movie used PIXAR’s proprietary CAPS System (hey that name sounds familiar 😉) to combine everything digitally. But that’ll have to be a story for another time!

Garak moodboard:

this only works if you 1) completely disregard canon timelines for the bit and 2) imagine sarah mclachlan singing 'angel' mournfully in the background like in one of those sad 1990s SPCA commercials

im so serious about this but if youre autistic and especially if youre chronically ill creative labour cannot be your only way to relax. working on a creative project is still working. take time to do nothing. its good for you i promise.

How does one do nothing? This is a genuine question. Very chronically ill autistic who wants to create all the time.

I don't know what OP would suggest but here are some restful activities that I've been trying to force myself to do more of:

I could definitely give a lot of that a try! Thank you!

I'm so glad. It's definitely a process for me, too. The brain's pressure to "create, create, create" and the way it equates 'chilling out' with 'losing' or 'wasting' time.

But I just have to keep reminding myself that resting is NOT a waste, it's nourishment and enrichment. I can't grow my creative crops if I don't nurture them with idleness.

best trope: "ugh I guess I'll tolerate you for the time being, but this is a conditional, tactical alliance, and the second I get what I want, we're parting ways" to "you are the only good in the world and I will protect you to my dying breath"

Today’s doodle is: privacy pls 😤😤😤

Other doodles

it's literally the evilest thing in the world to finally have time to write but then be tired. like wow you're telling me these two hours before going to bed are completely free but my brain is just Not Feeling It? fuck off

Favorite character

some early sauron concepts from this summer before i finished with this one

baby mairon, maybe mordor-era sauron? post eregion? and third age sauron, looking like someone just dug him out of a ditch

i really wanted the second one to have a very snakey kind of vibe

might recycle these concepts and develop them further!!

WHOA!!!!! i love my friends' ocs

Reblog to let your friends know you love their ocs