probably the worst attitude tumblr unintentionally cultivates is "the world out there is completely dangerous for you and no one can possibly understand you, so you should isolate yourself from it and avoid interacting with it as much as possible"

Time to roll out the Andrew Marr quote again...

"If you put away social media and you walk out into the streets and you look at real people, three-dimensional people, they mostly smile back at you. If you look around you- you see perfectly decent, ordinary people getting on with their lives and inclined, by and large, to rather like each other, that is the real us. Let us not be fooled."

so i hauve covid rn and i must say, American cold medicine is the absolute bees knees. You go to a UK pharmacy and they tenderly press like eight (8) paracetamol into the palm of your hand... God FORBID you're sick in France, i had to scour every pharmacy in Paris for something that wasn't HOMEOPATHIC PASTILLES. meanwhile last night i took the last of my stash of Nyquil that expired in 2019 and it was like getting hit by a fucking baseball bat (affectionate). press X to timeskip. LOVE me a cheeky little medically induced coma. you can really feel that it's a precursor to meth. i know that everything is fucking awful over there my friedns and my heart goes out to every one of you but if you need one small bright light of national pride in this time of strife please know that i envy you your cold medicine every day

i once took an american antihistamine pill just a basic one for seasonal allergies and i had to immediately lay down and while doing so i vividly hallucinated that i was a steerage passenger on the titanic resigned to my death as my cabin filled up rapidly with water. then i blacked out and when i woke up again my allergies were gone for the entire season.

The Hat Man is our greatest export

ao3 is not gonna start censoring fanfics just because the thought crimes people are throwing a hissy fit

ao3 has no algorithm so if you’re seeing works you do not want to read then my guy. what are you doing at the devils sacrament?

sometimes when a movie starts there is a scary lion but don't be scared

"I'm so lazy for lying down so often" "I'm so greedy for eating such a big meal" MY BEAUTIFUL FRIEND!!!! YOUUUU ARE A GIANT OMNIVORE. YOU'RE MEGAFAUNA. DO YOU KNOWWW HOW ENERGY EXPENSIVE IT IS TO KEEP A GIANT OMNIVORE WITH A HUGE BRAIN RUNNING. very!!! very energy expensive!!! eat that burger take that nap. holy moly. you wonderful animal. your species is made for frequent meals and daytime rests and long sleeps. let yourself be a human.

Your dialogue is stiff because everyone is being too honest

Great dialogue can come from radical emotional honesty. But in most real conversations, people

If your dialogue feels unnatural, it might be because everyone is saying exactly what they think, or articulating their thoughts too well. Try letting characters hide things instead.

Subtext is where tension lives.

more so,

many of you just. genuinely don’t believe that people can grow and change.

this is about the death penalty and its also about call out posts about people who have already apologized for things they did a long time ago and it’s also about using ‘toxic’ or ‘abuser’ as if its an immutable class of person, and its also about any other circumstance with permanent consequences or wherein you assume someone is still the same person they were.

you will look at my one painting. it’s 1914

Have you ever considered that Sisyphus might've just been in for the love of the game? My bus driver hits the same curb every morning

"Learn the fundamentals first" seems like really sound universal advice, and as a former classical musician, I can vouch for it. You will have a more solid foundation for increasing complexity if you put in the time to study in a structured way. If you don't, you'll have a lot of shit to fix later.

As a former music teacher, I can also say that "learn the fundamentals first" is the death knell for a vast percentage of beginners, especially adult learners.

I've run into this with drawing several times, where some well-meaning artist has lectured me on needing to study anatomy properly or not use shortcuts like CSP brushes. And oh, believe me, I know. I know exactly how to learn an artistic discipline in a structured way. I just...don't want to!

The thing is, I'm not aiming to be a professional artist. I want to draw my gay little anime guys. I would undoubtedly improve at art much faster if I approached every gay little anime guy drawing as a study exercise. But I would also have quit drawing a decade ago if I couldn't just let myself enjoy drawing imperfect fucked-up little guys with whatever shortcuts I needed to body myself across the finish line.

With my adult piano students, my approach was always "What's your goal?" If their goal was to learn exactly one Elton John songbook to play at parties, then...that's what we did. We'd put tape on the keys to label the notes, and just fuckin go for it. Learning exactly one Elton John songbook is a good and noble musical goal, full stop.

Some of my students needed and enjoyed a more structured approach to learning; if they wanted to be able to play classical music, then yes, scales were going to have to enter the equation at some point. And yet others would learn the Elton John songbook, catch their white whale, and realize they wanted to explore more of the ocean. The scales were still there for them to learn!

Often the choice isn't between "learn art well" and "learn art imperfectly" - the choice is between "learn art imperfectly" and "don't do art at all." To which I say, learn imperfectly! Or, what the hell, don't 'learn' art. Just do, and enjoy the doing of it.

You have official permission from your local pretentious classical music snob: fuck the fundamentals. You can always unfuck them later (but only if you want to).

basically my favorite thing to do is imagine The Character in some sort of situation of terrible emotional turmoil. it’s like enrichment for me

everyone in the grocery store is my enemy

i have formed an opinion that isn't worth expressing