At the time this story took place, I was like 6 years old. Growing up, I was a very mature child because I was never around other kids my age. My mom used to work a lot, so that left me with my dad but my dad was high off his ass (weed smoker) all the time, so he’d be passed out. My siblings were all in their late teens and with friends, so when I got home it was just me by myself. Everyday

And I had no other way to entertain myself than by watching TV. I watched everything, but my favorite was the after dark shows that came on HBO and stuff. The down side of watching those things was that I learned about things that was way ahead of my time with no adult supervision. 

Well, one day when I came home from school I was watching TV (dad was alseep again and I was alone) and I saw one of those little flity phone companies. They were like sex operators or whatever, but at that time, my naive ass just thought that it was to find best friends. Like penpals and stuff, so one day I got the house phone and dialed the number.

The first thing that popped up was this super seductive voice but my dumb ass just assumed the person was sick (lmfao) and it said “For a man, press one. For a woman, press two.”

So I was thinking “Boys are gross, I need a best friend that’s a girl.” So I pressed two.

It rang a couple times until this lady answered the phone and I remember her saying “Hey, my name is Cynthia. What’s your name?”

So I was like ‘shit I gotta come up with something cool to tell my bestie’ “What’s up, Cynthia.”

And immediately, she got super quiet before she asked me “Um…whom am I speaking to?”

“The name is Delilah, but all my friends call me D.” (I remember I was coloring in my Lisa Frank diary when I said it too omg)

And Cynthia got quiet again before speaking. “Uh, how old are you?”

“I’m six and a half.” *scribbles in diary harder* “What about you?”

So she got super quiet again and was like “Uh…sweetie, where is your mother?”

“My mom’s at her job. Something my dad can’t seem to get.” *takes a sip from juicebox*

And I could hear her let out a stiffled laugh from the other line before clearing her throat. “Well, where is your father?”

“My dad smoked too much weed again and he passed out. Again.”

This time, she let out a louder laugh and I was like ‘heck yeah I made a friend. Check mate.’

So Cynthia askes me another question. “You’re not old enough to be on here, honey. I think you should hang up.”

So I got really pressed and kinda got sassy with her and busted out a line I had seen used in the movie Clueless. “Listen Cynthia, I’m a young, independent woman that don’t need no man. I need a friend, okay? It said you’d be nice to me on the TV.”

At this point I could hear her laughing really loud and before I could finish, she stopped me. “C-Can you hold on one second, honey? I’ll be right back. Stay right where you are.”

I was like “Okay.” And in the mean time, I made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and got some juice to get comfy while I waited. She finally came back like five minutes later and asked me if I was still there. I told her I was and this time, I could hear my voice echo a bit, meaning I was on speaker obivously.

“How old are you again?” She asked.

“I’m six and a half, don’t forget it, girlfriend!” *sassily snaps my fingers and takes  a sip from juice*

This time, i could hear people laughing and saying ‘oh my god’ and shit like that in the background, so I asked her who it was. She told me they were her buddies and I remember saying something like “It’s always good to have ya homeis with you, right?’ and everyone laughed again.

Then they started asking me all kinds of shit too.

“Where do you live?”

“In a house, duh.”

“What school do you go to?”

“Why? So you can kidnap me? No thanks, girl.”

“How did you even get this number?”

“The TV, duh.”

Now after a while the group of people buzzed off and it was just me and Cynthia on the phone. We had a cool conversation about Lisa Frank books and I learned that she lived in Seattle with her boyfriend and that she had a little girl a couple years older than me.

At one point, I told her about the boys in my school that were bullying me and that I didn’t think I was very pretty. And you know what? She gave me some advice that I never forgot, even til this very day I still remembered it. She told me,

“Sometimes people will be mean to you for no reason and they won’t like you, but all that matters is if you like you. If you like yourself, that’s all that matters.”

Now at one point, nine o’clock rolled around and it was my bedtime, so I sadly told Cynthia “Okay, bestie. Its my bed time. I don’t wanna miss out on my beauty sleep.” and after exchanging goodbyes, we hung up.

So yeah, that’s my experience with the chatlines. Sometimes I think about Cynthia and wonder what happened to her in life. Is she still with her boyfriend? How is her daughter? I’ll never know.

Today’s cooldown. It was piccolo day yesterday but I was busy so I didn’t get to do a piccolo. But Piccolo is like…an evergreen fave, so I had to do one even if I’m late. 

When the cape comes off, you know he’s about to start. 

A growing collection of animated Pixel Art Tutorials by Pedro Medeiros (@saint11) of Studio Miniboss (they previously worked on TowerFall and are currently working on Celeste and Skytorn)

All +40 Pixel Art Tutorials can be found on blog.studiominiboss.com/pixelart (10 Pixel Art Tutorials are posted below)

i see a “different types of shading” chart pop up on my dash every now and then and while it can be helpful some of the examples don’t really showcase the shading type so well so i wanted to make my own. i mostly stick to cel or painted shading for my art! 

Rapture Citizens, for some reason: