Posts made by surreality

I love both, but have a special weakness for the non-ice cream ones since they're usually SO hard to find. (Trader Joe's has some great ice cream ones, too. The coffee one, sadly, is not one of them... <shudder>)

@Cupcake I have the most recent queued up for when the husband stops vacuuming the hallway outside the office so I can actually tell what's going on. (Wow, I didn't realize how hilariously patriarchy-bird-flipping in itself that statement was until I typed it, and now I'm giggling.)

I actually like that aspect of it, in that it does highlight the difference so well. 'This is how different it is from real world lives' shows when that's shown. (Will try to keep this spoiler-free.) Little details like 'the guide book' and how people are paired up are actually huge, even if they initially seem like fluff. Same with people actively discussing, 'welp, we're gay, but when our time comes to do our duty, you don't totally suck?' These things aren't minor shifts from modern real world society and without some attention paid to the romance foo, we wouldn't see them, know them, or understand that (important) aspect of the world-building, which affects so much more than romance; it's a whole paradigm shift being laid out. I mean, sure, they could have just cut to a lecture class in which some professor just says all of this, but that would be a much less honest depiction of how it actually impacts the characters' lives.

I have a sneaking suspicion this is where we're going to see a lot of the conflict and potentially some of the antagonist faction's issues arise, in that we -- in the real world -- would not be keen on putting up with a lot of that, and if that's one of the objections raised, it gives us in the audience reason to empathize rather than just broad-brush cartoon-villain the group, which is thankfully something most stories are getting better about.

ETA: What gets to me a little is that it's a world as different as, say, The Handmaid's Tale. I see different people complaining about the two series, though, and it's uncomfortable to realize that a lot of typically well-intentioned and fairly woke dudes have issues with Motherland, but not THM... and the ugly question about 'but the women are in charge in one, not the other' creeps into my brain.

Costco has mochi. Not the ice cream kind, but the kind stuffed with green tea, red bean, and taro pastegloop respectively.

I'm sure they're crap to purists, but damn are they tasty to me. They come in an assortment of the three flavors.

(I am more or less a sucker for taro anything especially.)

@Macha ODD. Oppositional Defiance Disorder; I know the feel. It is non-fun.

It's like having a brain hard-wired to send you running full tilt into the nearest wall repeatedly, like it's going to make a difference and fuck that wall in the first place because what business does it suddenly have being there the fucking fucker.

It is maybe one of the most annoying of all brain weasels.

Much empathy, all the virtual hugs (if welcome, obvs).

I can rarely be pried out of the house. Now, I want late night coffee at the diner. I want to lose money on the claw machine or grab something derpy we give to my wee second cousin's kidlets. I want to randomly browse at Michael's and getting my roots done -- which has been 'meh, whatever' for almost a year now is suddenly climbing out of the Marianas Trench of apathy to tap me on the shoulder, all, 'psst, your OLDNESS is really showing honeybear!'

@Aria Stalk their 'latest' page. It lists 'coming this week' and 'coming next week', and omg has it saved my sanity on and off seeing that something potentially cool is coming down the pike.

...I will shamefully admit I really enjoyed 'Outer Banks', too. While teen dramas are fairly flinchy for me, I have a weakness for treasure hunt stories and it wasn't a bad one. It's an easy one day half-assed attention binge, if nothing else.

@Groth They start getting into the aspects of imperialism in the most recent episode especially, so it may be taking a look at that. How that situation is going to be handled long term is something that interests me, at least.

I suspect the bigger drama will come from the 'terrorist' faction, which... well, my bet is on them being less insane than they're initially set up to be seen as. They're still fairly opaque for the moment, while the cracks and flaws of the military faction and the society built around it are being shown more and more.

Though, really. It's a show focusing on girls in their late teens. They should be pondering romances and relationships and normal people shit. They just can't, due to the position they're in. If that doesn't become increasingly relevant and obvious over time, it will annoy me, but as 'these are previously mostly normal girls leaving mostly normal girl life and moving into a life that doesn't allow for being normal girls any more in any way' the initial flirty foo and romantic stuff is a reasonable baseline. It's whether that line moves or not, and whether that's going to present a stark contrast to what happens later, that's going to be telling.

I mean, nobody ever stopped fucking in Game of Thrones.

This got put on hold 'cause I can either kill the hand cramps (even if they're fading) or the oh gods why do I even have these organs I never wanna use for stuff monthly shenanigans, which more or less have me coiled in a fetal ball and whimpering through re-watching The Last Kingdom to catch the new season at the tail end.

I used to make paper dolls, because why not. They were fun to doodle and it meant getting to draw all manner of crazy outfits. This is one of two I've been working on since getting the tablet, which will get picked up again once the ow-ow-ow-someone-call-Moses stops. (The other has boobies still visible, so not posting that for obvious reasons.)

There's a full nekkid person under the outfit, which is on different layers in photochop. She's done, it (obviously) isn't. Colors and shapes taken from a fantasy princessy dress spin on succulents.

But seriously 3 days of digital inking for a nekkid lady blooooooooows. I redid it like a dozen times before finding a better way for the second one, but yeesh. Ow, hand.

@JinShei You mightily kicked that pattern's ass, bad instructions or no! That came out great.

Also: you clearly have something that's so vital, not even kidding. All the stuff you've shown is with excellent choices of good quality materials, tasteful colors and patterns. Nobody can really teach that, and it's such a huge part of 'making stuff well'.

For fellow children of the 80s.

@TNP You do not have nearly enough upvotes for that link, OH MY GODS.

Incredibly stupid criminals.

Like most of us, at some point or another, an ancient password of mine leaked in a hack from somewhere. The only account that used it was changed, obviously, years ago when it happened.

Some dumbass, likely with that list of emails and passwords, is sending out the weirdest blackmail demand ever. Unfortunately, it's one that could hit a lot of folks, it's just weirdly laughable here.

No, I'm not going to buy you 2000 bitcoin, because I made a whopping $800 last year, dumbest criminal in history, and you'd know the impossibility of that if you really 'had access to all of my computer information from the past year' as you claim. Truly. If you had even the tiniest smidge of brainpower, you'd pick a target with money.

You can't even name the 'weird porn site', and considering that my real name is on my facebook, which you also claim to have? Yeah, somehow I think you would have used that, too. Even the crazy stalker/harasser knows to randomly page me my real name from a guest account to be a proper terrorist!

It's a classic 'WE GOT VIDEO OF YOU MASTURBATING TO WEIRD PORN!' scam, which is especially funny since, uh... I haven't even had a sex drive for four or five years now. Something they'd also see the endless whining about if they had access to my computer! (It would also be physically impossible to masturbate at my desk even if I was so inclined, because of the way this desk is jury-rigged together. Like, how the hell would a fat woman with little t-rex arms and giant boobs even pull that off in a space as tight as a cockpit? I AM NOT THAT CREATIVE AND NOW I FEEL LIKE I'M A FAILURE AT SOMETHING I DON'T EVEN CARE ABOUT OMG YOU ASSHOLE CRIMINAL!) That long standing joke about 'of course I type one-handed, where else am I going to put my cigarette?' is not a joke.

This doesn't worry me, but it does terrify me for people like my dad, who definitely lives by 'the internet is for porn' and is not very internet savvy. (Admittedly, he'd know this was nonsense as he doesn't have a facebook account... I'd HOPE.)

Dear internets: I really do not like having to send off a report to the FBI before my morning coffee. This being the third time I've had to do so over the past year or so? Please contain your collective crazies, maybe on a farm with no internet access, save for the live feed sent to pay-per-view so we can all enjoy watching them go Lord of the Flies on each other in the most pathetic way possible before descending into cannibalism. I might actually be willing to masturbate to that.

You are right, though, stupid internet criminal. The stuff that gets me all excited is super weird! I may not get moist for anything these days, but damn if a collection of Klimt and Mucha and Amano doesn't get my heart racing. Romeo Gigli coats from the 80s? SWOONVILLE, BABY. Let's not even get started on Victorian Gothic Revival furniture, or we'll be here all day. GoT costumes in detail? All the flutters. An actually good horror movie? AWWWWWWYISSSSSSSSS.

Dear moronic internet criminals: I understand that small minds typically project their own personal behavior patterns on others in an attempt to normalize them to themselves due to fear or shame that the behavior is unacceptable. It's super common. Sometimes it's related to behavior that is totally normal and actually fine, like you whacking it to, presumably, some sort of funky hentai in your mom's basement. Embrace your fetish -- or that character body pillow with the hole cut in it -- without shame, you do you! (Literally!) I know, you need that money badly to get a place of your own, so mom doesn't keep shouting down the stairs about where her lavender hand lotion went again.

P.S. Don't try to scam a broke, frigid, snarky-as-fuck fat old cow on the first day of brutal cramps shark week. It ain't gonna go well for you, buddy.

@RightMeow That is very beautifully put, and bears repeating.

@insomniac7809 I saw mention of this one when I braced for the morning news check. I just called my husband in to listen to it with me because I suspected -- and was not wrong -- that I would simply be raggedly screaming and gibbering incoherently at the screen and thoroughly unable to explain why for several minutes.

It's more, uh... fun when we're both doing that, anyway.

Are we at the point of doing reaction videos to these press conferences yet? Because while I wouldn't be doing it, I sense a major opening here.

Digital inking is not actually my irk, even though it's irking the shit out of me right now.

The hand cramps are not actually my irk, even though they're irking the shit out of me right now.

My 'SOME MINOR THING IS NOT RIGHT YET'-ness is not actually my irk, even though it's irking the shit out of me right now.

What's annoying the shit out of me, well and fucking truly? Inking (and watercolor) was absolutely my jam. I had all the tiniest rotring rapidographs by the time I was ten and I loved workin' that shit, so I did it constantly until my mid-20s, way back in ye olden 90s.

I would have thought not messing with them for as long as I did, my hands might have shaken the religious adherence to the style I had then, which my hands just knew rote.

NOPE.

Rassa-frassa unlearning old habits. Muthafeckin' new tools learning curve.

Things looking better before I 'inked' them is just... not OK, universe. On some level, this feels like trying to thread a needle in oven mitts.

I have no actual business bitching. I don't. It's going pretty well, considering. Not where I want to be, but better than I expected. Still, I'mma nitpick the fuck out of every 'getting used to the tools' scratchymark in the wrong place.

@TheOnceler <empathy fistbump>

Until this moment, I had almost forgotten about the fourth grade talent show, the Morris the Cat costume, and the lipsync number to 'If my friends could see me now' that my mother squealed madly about 'how adorable!!!' it was.

Now, in my head, adult me confronts the child psychologist who asked, 'Why do you think your parents didn't do enough to prevent you from being bullied in school?' with a slideshow, starting off with: "Exhibit one, your honor, this furry neon orange cat-eared potato sack and matching tights."

So, I ordered a slimline pen for the tablet because I have tiny mutant child man hands and big fat pens exacerbate the cramps. It was worth it after realizing 'yes I like this'.

The pen came with a case, how nice!

Er.

I had a moment in which I realized there was surely not a single woman on the design team for the Wacom pen case, because one is expected to be able to use this to take the pen along wherever, in a purse or laptop case or whatever.

...yeeeeeeeeeahno. Not doing that. (In any sense.)

Really glad my mother didn't accidentally open that amazon package. I cannot even imagine the amount of 'I SWEAR IT ISN'T WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE OMG MOM SRSLY!' would have rocketed me back to being a teenager in the worst possible way. (I can't help this happening sometimes. Our address is super vague, and so all packages and bills and whatnot goes to the folks, who are next door facing a cross street with a sane people address without perpetually lost mail.)

@RightMeow I feel this one SO HARD.

HOLY CRAP the hand cramps.

I have never ever ever been happier to have hand cramps.

I haven't actually drawn anything in well over a decade, since shortly after the last art school, save for a few very small bits over a summer that was still well over a decade ago now. The creeping dread was real as fuck.

It's going to take a WHILE to adjust to the toolset, but it could be going so much worse for so many reasons.

Quarantine?

Meet quarantoy:

I have only wanted one of these for half my life or thereabouts, but... there's finally a cheap one that isn't crap.

Did not wake up this morning knowing this existed, or this would be possible for the long-long-long time I'd accepted it probably would end up being for ages now.

S'cuse me, I got a rabbit hole to joysqueal into for a while like a tween at a boyband marathon.