insanitysquid's ramblings

Fandom Problem #15,128:

you have to be kinder to people who are slow processors.

you have to be kinder to people who don't understand your jokes.

you have to be kinder to people who forget important dates.

you have to be kinder to people with cognitive decline.

you have to be kinder to people who were always this way, too.

When Life Gives You Corpses is a brilliant YA about a cursed praying mantis who falls for a young witch. Yield Under Great Persuasion is a raunchy, but surprisingly sweet story of two men repairing their relationship. Fabulous Bodies is a horror story about a queer rockstar rising from the dead.

This is Where the Future Bleeds is a fantasy set in a vividly imagined land, where two women (who happen to kiss) are the key to healing the broken sky. You're No Better is a story about a teen struggling in the shadow of his murderous parent. Oil on Canvas is about a woman who finds disturbing paintings in the home of her dead mother.

Gargoyle character studies I had on my Patreon for a while now, featuring Brooklyn, Broadway, Lexington, and Angela! :)

These were largely a bid in trying to capture the likeness of the characters while translating them into my style. As seen with Angela's sheet: what I did was take the official character model sheet and trace it to get a feel of their base character shapes, then did a second pass over the trace to add the features I wanted to incorporate into my headcanon design.

The final iteration (the big colored ones) is entirely freehanded and drawn using my passes as reference. I like how they all came out! :>

I'll eventually do the same with other characters (Elisa, Demona, Goliath, and Hudson are next on my list), then do fullbody redesigns to act as refs for any future drawings and headcanons I make for Gargoyles.

Second time was "also men!"

Fucking stop.

Here's a pretty good organization that does this type of work!

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Though they make at least $7.25 an hour, the state siphons 40% off the top of all wages and also levies fees, including $5 a day for rides to their jobs and $15 a month for laundry.

Turning down work can jeopardize chances of early release in a state that last year granted parole to only 8% of eligible prisoners — an all-time low, and among the worst rates nationwide — though that number more than doubled this year after public outcry."

Mental Health Resources [ Link ]

I know, to some, this was just a game but to others Destiny was a lot more.

I know the game has help me through some tough times

The game and the world of Destiny is still there. It's just not a live service anymore. This beautiful world Bungie made isn't disappearing.

"It must have serious value!"

I was sending a box of stuff to France, and it included a signed and authenticated N64 game cartridge. I didn't want to take THE SLIGHTEST REMOTEST chance that it would be damaged in transit, so I wrapped it in multiple layers of felt and plastic bags and tied it all in place with twine. Through the twine I stuck an addressed letter in both English and French, basically saying "Dear customs people, I realize the odds are extremely good that you'll have to open this but it's really fragile and very literally irreplaceable so if you do can you please rewrap it, all my thanks", and then I boxed the whole thing up with some other stuff and sent it on its way.

While it was in transit, I mentioned this to the recipient, who told me she appreciated the thought but it could never work because French officials were notorious for careless handling. I'd already been anxious about sending it, and the possibility that they'd just be zipping through stuff at the speed of light and leave it susceptible to damage--now that anxiety was ratcheted up to high.

And then it arrived. The recipient sent me a pic and said "they didn't open it after all." The thing is.

When I'd wrapped it, the last layer on the outside was plastic. When it arrived the letter had been opened and set elsewhere in the box, and the carefully-wrapped layer on the outside was felt.

They had indeed opened it. And then, just as I'd asked, hoped, had very neatly wrapped it again. All seven or eight layers. The twine hadn't been retied, but it didn't matter--there were enough layers to hold it together.

One day a few years ago, some civil servant in French Customs saw this letter carefully written in the clearest possible handwriting in two languages, and the care with which everything in the box had been packed, and took a couple of minutes out of their day to say "I can be someone's hero today" and helped to protect a treasure for the last few miles with as much care as if it were their own package going to their own dear friend.

(It arrived in perfect shape.)

Anyway I know that official will never know how happy they made me, to know that they saw and cared that it mattered to me. But I hope that somewhere, sometime, someone pays forward to them the kindness they showed not just to a pair of strangers, but a pair of strangers they could never possibly hope to meet, and I hope it inspires you to remember you never know when a little thing will mean a lot to someone.

Saw the tweet, the concept of Simon putting his hair up GRAHAGHA, it has me in such a chokehold bro istg, imma draw iron lung grace later. Also i need more adrian and simon interacting