okay so hey let’s talk about something that bugs me in fanfic about artistic characters: not all artists will wistfully draw the dude they have a crush on’s face over and over in their sketchbooks. like, few of them. very few of them.
i went to a visual arts school full of horny, lonely young people ages 18-28 and we were all constantly showing each other our sketchbooks, as is the traditional combat maneuver of the visual artist, and you know how many sketches of anyone’s boyfriend or girlfriend or love interest i saw? several hundred, if you count anime characters. maybe two or three if you only count real life people. mostly we just drew our friends. as anime characters. i’m an illustrator. i live with other illustrators. i know my roommate’s girlfriend’s cute anthro dog oc’s better than i know her face.
so like— is your character an artistic? do they like to draw? do they have a crush on someone? is it unrequited? they’re going to fill their sketchbook up with like, inu yasha covered in blood. or whatever the cool sad anime is for kids these days, but definitely someone sad and covered in blood. or like two faceless dudes fucking a cake, i saw that once. i knew a girl who only drew people fucking cakes, her whole sketchbook. your character also might just draw dragons everywhere, or really bad robots in smudgey pencil. your character is at some point going to draw a really skinny girl with really big boobs, holding a sword.
but like, as a general rule, visual artists don’t casually or absent-mindedly render things that are hard or make them anxious. like, drawing realistically from memory a crush’s face. will your character draw maybe a wolf or a horse or a dragon that somehow symbolically represents the object of their affections? pretty good odds. absentmindedly launching into a whole portrait of their beloved without noticing because they are so romantically forlorn? very unlikely. drawing their crush’s favorite flower or food or animal or character or something? definitely.
anyway, drawing from life is tough. drawing from life from memory is tougher. unless an artistic character is stated in canon to be good at portraiture, they’re really unlikely to fill their sketchbook up with wistful handsome faces.
feel free to reblog this post and add your own opinion, though, if you’re another visual artist.
Best visual representation of functional depression I’ve ever seen. You go to work, do the things that people expect you to do, then come home and just… blank out. Microwave is your best friend. Cleaning makes no sense. Drinking helps a little, sometimes. Every evening is the same. Nothing ever changes except the amout of trash waiting to be thrown out.
This is why I loved Fraction’s Barton. Clint’s very visible depression gave me a hook that I could suddenly relate to. I’ve been where Clint was. It sucked. But seeing Clint keep going kind of gave me hope.
Change the background colour of the pages to a mint green shade.
It is said that green is a calming colour, however, the main reason why I like this, is because I can write for a much longer period of time now, as a white background I used before made my eyes dry and exhausted after just a few hours of working.
It is basically much more soft and careful to the eyes. I can’t precisely explain why that is. I think it’s that by making a pinch softer contrast of the text and the background, your eyes does not get exposed to as much light.
Just make sure to not make the background too dark, or else your eyes will get exhausted do to over-fixating the lack of contrast between text and background.
And maybe you find a nice pastel/light background shade that fits you; give it a try.
Different things work out and fits for different people. And I just felt like sharing this.
Here’s the shade numbers I used to get my preferred colour:
Thanks for reading.
DUDE
You just solved a very real problem for me! Thanks!
For those who might not know where to find this: It’s in the Page Layout tab.
A patronus, Harry tells Hermione, is acing a test and the warmth of a butterbeer between your hands. It is your friends holding you when you fall, and Ron’s sparkling eyes when you whisper hi. And there’s an otter, swimming, and Hermione is blushing.
A patronus, Harry tells Ron, is Ginny’s shaky smile lighting up the world at the end of second year. It is winning the Quidditch World Cup, unwrapping yet another knitted jumper, and your startled surprise at the sight of Hermione punching Draco in the face. And there’s a dog, chasing the otter, and Ron is laughing.
A patronus, Harry tells Luna, is the feeling of starlight on your skin and grass between your bare toes. It is snow melting through your fingers, the magic your mother used to make, something singing in your heart when you stare at the impossible. And there’s a hare, jumping, and Luna is shining.
A patronus, Harry tells Cho, is Marietta shouting the lyrics of her favourite song, dancing in the rain during a storm. It is the look on Cedric’s face when he saw you at the Yule Ball, his hand holding yours and never letting go. And there’s a swan, sliding, and Cho is crying.
A patronus, Harry tells Seamus, is Dean’s funny expression when he is about to burst into laughter and the sound of a explosion that turns out right. It is the fireworks, bright flowers blossoming in the night sky; and the fire burning in your lungs as you fly. And there’s a fox, running, and Seamus is smirking.
A patronus, Harry tells Ginny, is the world expanding underneath you and the wind playing with your hair. It is dancing and laughing until there are tears on your cheeks, Molly’s disapproving voice and Arthur’s amused eyes after one of the twins’ pranks. And there’s a horse, flying, and Ginny is grinning.
A patronus, Harry thinks, is that weird feeling that lives in his chest when the Room of Requirement glows silver, speaking of times when the world was golden.
A patronus, Harry tells Neville, is the scent of freshly turned earth and the feel of the sun through the Greenhouse glass. It is working with your hands in a garden, helping fragile plants and tender seeds grow. It is being buried under friends at a Closing Feast, having won the victory through a different kind of courage. But there’s no victorious moment here, no animal appearing in swirling silver. Just a puff of smoke, insubstantial and insignificant and isn’t that just the way of it for him?
You’ll get there, Harry tells Neville. I mean, it took me ages to learn. You’ll find the right memory. Though Neville sees an uncertainty in his eyes when he says it that he’s all too used to.
And Harry is wrong. Neville doesn’t get it. Not that year, not in the year that follows, and not when Harry disappears and Neville is left to try and fill a space he knows he will never fit into. It’s his secret, the one he doesn’t tell anybody, that their leader, their hero, their general, can’t produce a patronus of his own.
A patronus, he tells so many others, is the feeling of your mother hugging you goodnight, of your father telling you he’s proud of all you’ve done. It’s family-filled Christmas mornings and sun-drenched summer days and the knowledge that you are protected, that you are safe, that you are loved. He feeds them the memories he wishes he had, and it works, for them, and he is proud of their successes. He is. He is.
And then, when the battle comes, as he always knew it would, they appear, black and lethal and full of despair. And he watches them swoop down on the battlefield, watches them prey on his friends, his soldiers, his comrades, and he fills with fury, that they dare come here, that they dare try to hurt the ones he has sworn to protect.
He is filled with fire, and he doesn’t even need the words. He points his wand, and a silvery shape explodes from its end, banishing the Dementors with its strength and size and power and fury. And as the massive lion makes its way back to where Neville stands, he knows the truth.
A patronus, he thinks, isn’t the feeling of dirt on his hands or the smell of the lilacs that grow outside his bedroom window. A patronus is a sad story told in bubble gum wrappers and vacant stares, a lifetime of criticisms and reprimands and knowing that he’ll never be good enough. It is a childhood with not enough happy memories in it, and a child who somehow overcame all that to stand where he is today.
Someday, a patronus will be the scent of flowers, the laughter of his child, the feeling of his beloved in his arms. Someday, it will be all those moments and memories he fed to others. But today, a patronus is seeing with his own two eyes that even in a world as dark and bleak and black as this one has become, there are things and people and ideas worth protecting. It is doubting yourself and your abilities and your worth, but in spite of that, never once doubting for the briefest instant that protecting those things and people and ideas matters so much more than protecting yourself.
Because I am annoyed about people saying “Hillary Clinton is basically a Republican” I’m going to do some math. As a bonus point, I’ll have “Bernie Sanders is not nearly as extremist as you’ve been told.”
In the modern era, we have a wonderful thing called a NOMINATE score. Based on who a lawmaker votes with, and how frequently, it clusters lawmakers into groups (it turns out, in the US, there are exactly two and they correspond – not surprisingly – to left and right), it assigns a lawmaker a numerical assessment of their ideological position. It’s not perfect, and there are some more precise methods, but it is pretty darn good and most importantly, it’s utterly objective. It doesn’t rely on gut feelings or pet issues. It’s mathematically deduced from voting patterns.
So we can get a mathematical answer to “How liberal or how conservative is Hillary Clinton?” It won’t be based on anyone’s opinion, just on how she actually voted, and who she voted with.
I’m going to use NOMINATE scores from the 110th congress, because it’s the only Senate that contains both Clinton and Sanders, and also has several other useful benchmark senators. (By convention, left-wing ideology is negative numbers on the NOMINATE scale, because negatives are on the left side of a graph. I’m going to stick to that to avoid confusion.) The scale is -1 to +1, with -1 being a perfect liberal partisan, +1 being a perfect conservative partisan, and 0 being a totally balanced centrist.
During the 110th Congress, the Democratic + Independent senate caucus had 51 members, ranging from Sanders (most liberal, a -0.523) to Ben Nelson (most centrist at -0.035). Imagine we had all the senators standing in a line, arranged by NOMINATE score, with Sanders at the left and Nelson on the right.
Now, imagine you take this line and cut it in half. You can’t, quite, because there are an odd number of senators (51), so the man in the middle – Oregon’s own Ron Wyden (at -0.324) – has to pick a side. Oregon’s a pretty liberal state, and Wyden is a pretty liberal guy, so let’s put him on the left. So now there are two groups – 27 leftist democrats (+ independent) running from Sanders to Wyden, and 26 centrist democrats (+ independent) running from future VP and American’s weird uncle Joe Biden (at -0.321) to Ben Nelson.
We know where Sanders is: he’s out holding down the left flank. Where’s Clinton? If you believed the line that “Clinton is basically a Republican,” you’d say definitely on the right side, probably out by Nelson, right?
Nope.
She’s on the left side. At #13th most liberal member of the senate, with a NOMINATE score of -0.381, she’s at the precise middle of the left wing of the Democratic party. She’s not right wing. She’s not a centrist. She’s not even with Joe Biden at the center of the Democratic party. She’s standing comfortably in the middle of the Democratic left.
As it happens, this was also Obama’s last term in the Senate. So where’s he? He must be off well to the left of Clinton, right? I mean, it’s a truism that Clinton is to the right of Obama … but nope. Even though their scores are almost identical, Obama at -0.363 is a small but noticeable step to the right of Clinton.
Sanders, though, wow, he’s way out in left field, right? At -0.523, he must be well outside the range of reasonable, right? A total nutjob.
Not really.
At -0.523 he is the most liberal senator in the 110th congress (although, in the present congress, he’s actually third behind Warren and Baldwin). But how extremist is that, exactly? Let’s look at the other side for some context.
Imagine a dark mirror of Bernie Sanders, from the evil Star Trek universe, goatee presumably included. Where our Bernie Sanders is a leftist, this Bernie Sanders is a rightist, with exactly the same amount of intensity. He’d easily be the most right-wing Republican, though, right?
Hahahah. No.
The most right-wing Republican in the 110th is Tom Coburn of Oklahoma at 0.807. Holy shit! That’s way more conservative than Sanders is liberal! Imagining our Mirror Bernie, he’d be hovering around 10th place for “most partisan,” right about with John Cornyn at 0.517. Still a pretty strong ideologue but nowhere near the level of the hardcore wingnuts. And, most notably well more moderate than President George W Bush, who in the 110th clocks in at 0.729, on the extreme edge of political partisanship.
Sad note: if you look at the modern senate, the Republicans have entrenched even more. The most extreme republican in the 113th Congress was Mike Lee, at 0.986. The degree to which he’s not a utterly complete right-wing extremist is a rounding error.
So, that’s what’s up with the political alignments of the Democratic primary candidates, and math.
I don’t think this takes into account the issue of riders. Still, it’s interesting.
If Uber has ever made you feel uncomfortable or if you heard of or personally experienced sexual assault while using Uber, consider Chariot for Women.
Chariot for Women is very similar for women but it is strictly for women (and boys under the age of 13) and all the drivers are women. There are many security features established such as the driver must confirm their identity before every drive and there is a safe word given to the driver and passenger.
Also 2% of each fare is donated to women-focused charities.
The app is being released on April 19. I strongly consider everyone to check it out.
A few hours ago, a German news organisation called “Süddeutsche Zeitung” released an article detailing how they, along with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and a lot of other news organisations, had about 2.6 terabytes of data from a Panama law firm called “Mossack Fonseca”. This firm sells “shell” companies – companies which only exist on paper – to basically anyone who asks, allowing them to cover up business dealings by doing it under the name of the shell company.
Politicians, FIFA officials, celebrities, athletes, drug smugglers, and fraudsters are all some of the people who have been implicated in this leak.
What does this mean?
Mossack Fonseca allows some of the wealthiest people in the world to move a lot of their money to tax havens, so as a result they can pay far, far less tax than they would normally. This allows their wealth to grow to immense sizes, driving income inequality sky-high.
Who is in the leak?
Family members close to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, the actor Jackie Chan, the Icelandic Prime Minister, high-ranking Chinese authorities, and many other public officials around the world are allegedly found in the documents leaked so far.
How big is this leak?
Over 11 million documents are in this leak, of which just 149 have been released as of writing. This is the single biggest data leak in history, entirely about corruption.
What will this change?
Already, there are huge calls in Iceland for the prime minister to resign, and to call an election. With the Icelandic Pirate Party currently leading the polls, that could be a fascinating change.
Also, it’s likely that many people currently in power could be forced to resign, or be placed in prison.
Is this actually illegal?
Technically, no. Having a shell company in order to move money around is not illegal in itself; however, a lot of the people who use this system are doing it in very dodgy and occasionally illegal ways. The president of the Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, used Mossack Fonseca to increase his wealth after being elected on the same day that his soldiers were being killed by the Russian army, for example.
Cosette has a new frock!!!! Don’t worry all the iconic black dress is still in use!!!!!! #zoedoano #cosette #newcostume #lesmis #lesmiserables #happy #love
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Oh, don’t worry about it, Luke. My dreams were shattered years ago.
Luke Skywalker: How many years ago?
Obi-Wan Kenobi: How old are you?
eirenical17 