🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮

All of life, I wanted to tell him, is in our minds. Where else does it take place, where else do we add up what it means to us and subtract what we have lost? An event is just an event until some person attaches meaning to it.

Robin Hobb: Fool’s Fate

“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

I've been feeling quite bad about my art for a while now and I decided to compile some of my Realm of the Elderlings fanarts as a reminder to myself that I've never drawn this much in a single year before (and it's not even August yet) and that being hard on myself won't get me anywhere. If anything, it only kills the motivation to draw. Hopefully it gets better, because there's so much I wanna draw!

being in my 20s is like I understand more of my mother and less than i ever have. My childhood friends are strangers to me and there’s no one i know better. i want to drink wine. i never stopped wanting to climb trees. i know more than I’ve ever known before. I don’t know anything at all. i’m seven years old and sixteen and twenty nine and seventy. I can’t tell when i'm happy. I think the only thing that will make me happy is to be little again. i want to be really old. i go to the ocean and feel like nothing matters more than that. in my bedroom everything matters so much. I go to the grocery store every day. i know how to cook a lot of things but the only thing i know how to eat is fried eggs. I can take care of myself but i want to be taken care of. i want to go home and I don't know where that is. i think it may be somewhere inside of me but i’m not sure

have you ever seen the english subtitles for a chinese bootleg of harry potter and the chamber of secrets?

because

they’re

great

full album here

~quarantine vibes masterpost~

as requested (though this is more resources and less vibes) and with a bigggg caveat that, obviously, life looks very very different for all of us right now. hopefully something on the list below will be useful to you. (art)

activities

this is gonna sound stupid but i really recommend deep-cleaning your house/apt, for a number of reasons. one, you’re gonna be spending some serious time in there, you deserve a nice space. two, you will inevitably unearth fun stuff you forgot you had. case in point: i found a deck of cards and now all we do is play rummy 500.

reading. so hot right now. trends really do come back. 

comfort reads (and these) (and these). personally i’ve been alternating between bon-bon YA and slow, lush works by writers i already know i love, like melville & anne carson.

pandemic reads (and these).

scribd (unlimited ebooks & audiobooks) has a one month free offer rn; it’s usually $9/month. kindle unlimited also has a 2-month free subscription but i’m not linking to that, stop giving your money to amazon.

crafts!! producing an object with my own two hands feels like the best thing right now. i’ve been making kitschy potholders because i am emotionally in the third grade, but that spring cleaning will probably turn up all sorts of good crafty objects. if the adult coloring book your aunt gave you is lost for good, i recommend checking out #colorourcollections pages from years past.

go for walks/runs/whatever, but keep it local (no driving 4 hours away and infecting a new town with your old town’s germs), isolated (no popular jogging trails!), and legal (state parks & beaches are closed for a reason). 

shopping, but make it free

PC games: here + here

print-and-play boardgames (& also cards against humanity, family edition)

magazines (through RBD + your library)

tv/movie streaming: HBO is free rn! & here are 10 other free streaming services. feel-good show plug: leverage is available on IMDB tv :-)

academic books: biiig long list here; does not include de gruyter (not all books are free rn, but a lot are–i downloaded 27 the other night. you may need to use a university VPN in order to have access, i can’t quite tell); cambridge UP; or manchester UP.

life, but make it virtual

free exercise classes (big list here; i hate working out so i’ve just been doing yoga with adriene.) 

museum tours

theater & opera (the UK’s national theatre at home; the shows must go on; the met)

NPR has an ongoing list of free virtual concerts, sorted by genre & time.

nikon is offering all of their photography classes for free during april

fender’s offering 3 months of free online guitar lessons

adobe creative cloud is free for students until june

also there are a million academic MOOCs available right now, if your brain is in a place where that seems doable. 

food

supercook lets you input the ingredients you’ve got and suggests recipes that make use of them! good for figuring out to do with those weird beans in the back of your pantry.

in my house: we’re working through the stupid big tea stash i unearthed and eating a lot of big-batch comfort food–soups, homemade mac & cheese, etc. 

maybe this is only happening in california but we haven’t had flour in a full month so here is a roommate-approved chocolate cake recipe that only uses 1 tbs of flour

keep track of local food service strikes! if you’re ordering delivery from local businesses, please tip generously. 

oh you’re trying to work?

(wheeze)

i hate working at home because i am really, really bad at it. the only thing that’s done the trick for me is physically changing workspaces (i never work at the dining room table downstairs but i live there now), wearing headphones, and lighting a candle.

ambient sound: coffitivity; DIY mixer.

cold turkey. 

in general i’m just trying to be gentle with myself and acknowledge that doing work right now is absurd–it’s has to happen but it doesn’t have to be good or graceful.

coronavirus-specific resources:

facemask template. this is the handsewing one i’ve been using, from the NYT; if you have fabric + a basic sewing kit (needle, pins, thread) you’ll be good to go. if you don’t have access to a sewing kit, the CDC has two new-sew options here.

healthdata.org. this website has been good for helping my brain be reasonable about the situation; data is saturating the news rn but this site has concrete region-specific projections about fatality rates and resource use and is good for reminding you that this thing has an end point.

I want to apologise to

- Britney for making fun of her when she had her breakdown

- Monica Lewinski for judging her when she was a 22year old temp sexually assaulted by the most powerful man in the world

- Ke$ha for ever thinking she was trashy when all she wanted to do was make party music

- Kristen Stewart for ever thinking she was dumb when she’s actually one of the coolest people ever

- Megan Fox for ever thinking she was just a slut when actually she was an actress being harassed by her employer. 

- Hating all the women who made a career out of having a hot body. Being is shape is hard, beauty is a weapon and auto promotion is hard work. 

- All the Mary-Sues, who exist because young girls everywhere want to be part of a story they love so much

- All the female characters I ever snobbed because they got in the way of my ship.

- Hating the color pink during my teenage years, when it’s actually a lovely color and what I resented was society’s pressure to perform femininity. 

So many summer fields

An ode to the passage of time.

“Running into the sun, but I’m running behind.”

- prints ! -

i promised clown movie fanart and by god if im not gonna deliver (two months late)