It Can Be Really Hard To Learn To Engage In Positive Self Talk, But Sometimes It's Easier To Start By

would love someday to make a game with these guys, did a sketch to try and get down the style and setting Id want to go with

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Unsplash -  photography, illustration, & art

Pixabay - same as unsplash

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Getty Images - photography & illustration

Veceezy - vectors and clipart

Gumroad - photoshop brushes (and more)

StockSnap.io - stock photos

Canva - needs login but has lots of templates

Library of Congress - historical posters and photos

NASA - you guessed it

Creative Commons - all kinds of stuff, homie

Even Adobe has some free images

There are so many ways to make moodboards, bookcovers, and icons without plagiarizing! As artists, authors, and other creatives, we need to be especially careful not to use someone else’s work and pass it off as our own. 

Please add on if you know any more resources for free images <3

So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.

Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.

One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.

All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.

So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.

And Mr. Hargrove loved it.

It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.

Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”

And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.

Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.

One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.

That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.

And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.

And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)

So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.

Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.

Do people care if u get inspired by other polls.... Anyway the red/blue poll I see going around is nice but I found that I associate my friends with all sorts of colors so. here

my goal for 2025 is small simple and clear: change my whole entire life

I would love to hear some lore between Vex and Sunflower!!!

AHHHH OKAY!!!

(For clarity, Vex uses She/They pronouns and Sunflower uses Any)

So Isla Q is a QSMP parody rp server I'm on with @mement0m0r1 (who put the whole thing together!), @sotibllec, and a bunch of other awesome people! The island, train station, and general premise is the same as the QSMP, but the Federation itself and the general plotline is quite different. Different how, I'm not quite sure yet, but investigation is ongoing on the island!

Just like the QSMP, residents of Isla Q found eggs in an adoption center built into the wall and were assigned partners to take care of them with! My character, Vex, was partnered with another character, 02, and they chose an egg with a sunflower on its shell and named her Sunflower Due to a mix of irl factors, 02 hasn't been able to be very active on the server, which means that Vex and Sunny have grown very close.

And nowww the funky stuff. There were a couple weeks where Vex wasn't able to be on the island (school got hectic.) During this time, Sunny grew very close to one of the Federation workers who had a sharpie smile drawn on his face by other islanders named Friendly Worker. Friendly has since disappeared without a trace, leaving Sunflower confused but certain that their friend would show up to save them if he was ever in danger.

That theory was tested when, one week, the task entailed taking the eggs to an ocean monument. Sunny was slain by a guardian.

When Sunny woke up back at home, Vex was there waiting. Sunny couldn't understand why her friend hadn't saved her, and Vex didn't have the heart to tell him that the very organization he called her friend was the one that assigned the dangerous task in the first place.

Here's an elaboration of the relationship between them (with hints at Vex’s own little secrets):

artist tips

don’t save as jpeg

I don't wanna @ anyone because I understand how fast things seem to move in today's landscape of streaming shows dropping entire seasons in one day, and networks pumping out new series constantly to try to attract more subscribers with no intent to actually maintain those shows over time but I just saw someone self-deprecatingly lament that they are still thinking about a show that ended almost a year ago, making fan art and playlists for it, and I want to be very clear:

you can still create fanworks when it comes to old media!! PLEASE do!! there are always going to be new fans who will appreciate it, and veteran fans who are dying for new content and new perspectives. also, less than a year is NOTHING. the original Star Trek series was on TV six decades ago and there are still people losing their minds over it, writing stories and reblogging gifsets daily, and that's only one example.

a fandom lasts as long as there are people who love a thing, even if it's only a handful of people. love what you love and write and draw and make gifs and playlists about it!

is now a good time to mention that the entrance to the cave (looks like an eye) (right above the rift) combined with the bridge kinda looks like an eye (an eye) and it kinda looks like its looking down at the rift (the rift)