Face your daylight horrors!
(Except acorns, it is totally fine to avoid those whenever possible. Seriously, they bother me.)
I am an emotional and enthusiastic person, so here there will be feelings! Mostly good feelings, but awkwardly expressed. That is just how I do things.
There are a gazillion things I want to do, and contribute with (hello Femslash Friday why flicker by so quickly all the time, what do with my femslashy fic recs now), but. But.
So my grandmother who is still alive turned ninety yesterday, and collapsed at the reception and then there was an ambulance and medics and now she is at the hospital. They admitted her right away, because it was discovered she had problems with her heart, and she was very cross about her party being cancelled; it was all nice and formal and we were going to go to a fancy restaurant and be all.. proper, and things, I guess, like she likes us to be, but now I am just rambling again.
I have not slept since, because I am too scared and sad and dread closing my eyes, and it is not like she is dying right now or anything, but she is ninety, and this is not good at all. I am waiting for the hospital to call with news, and I am going to call her when the pone times start, and then come visit; I will have to find the energy for going into town to the hospital, somehow.
I just cannot lose this grandma, too.
Combo’s exuberant Tara Amell and flabbergasted Ser Thora Cousland
because she asked me for Tara-hugs and that is not the sort of request one turns down, also I kind of ship the hell out of this in all its glorious au incarnations
Okay so first some Swedish button smashing because I need to get that out of my system: öaeklocmmhåmvgnljfaöfmvkgjnvr aaaaaah
Tara just has such a wonderful expression of joyful bliss, like she is living a fairytale romance where everything turns out well for all involved and then a happily ever after awaits, and Thora looks like she cannot quite believe this is happening to her (because Thora might overhear a fairytale once in a while, but she never lives them) but is close to let go of her disbelief and go for this instead
and this probably happens after months of awkward flirting that Thora does not quite understand what to do with, but Tara is the most determined because this was all meant to be, okay, and it is just such a beautiful picture, both due to your technical skill and how well you capture the joy of the moment, and I just, aaah, and oooh, and aaah because overwhelmed :O and omgthankyouthankyouthankyou you are so good at this and it just, is such a happy picture, so full of the feeling of the joy of attaining something you have longed for for so long, it even lifts my spirits :O
Tara magic? hawkeward magic :O
During the night that brought me to yesterday I cried myself to the world of dreams, and while under the white dust from green capsules sleep someone whispered cruel fairy tales in my ear; one of a cruel woman in a Lucia crown who did evil onto others driven by nothing more petty than misplaced jealousy and of the tower she trapped people in for meaningless vengeance, and of a fragile human soul with the voice of a nightingale who chose to leap from it to escape it even when true escape was so close by; but perhaps she would have leapt from one anyway, sooner or later, and this was only the excuse closest at hand. I dreamt in vivid detail of the tower’s windows and how I broke them to avoid suffocation or drowning even though there was no water and plenty of air so perhaps, I, too, was only looking for an excuse to break something, but could not bring myself to do it to my entire body.
As that was not enough dread for one night, another tale was whispered to me; of a beautiful shape shifter who forgot which form was her true one and how she had her heart torn our by the one person who wanted her back in it, all while trying to save her from her own deadly confusion and the old man who tumbled into madness as a punishment for driving her to hers, and I wept for them all and was relived to return to the waking world when I opened my eyes to it, but as awareness rooted me in reality I remembered that in this world of breaths spent counting breaths I still have those I weep for and mourn, and for a moment I forgot how to make myself breath. My head spun as I laid my eyes on the wooden chest I would not have if I had not outlived someone so dear to my heart, and although this is a body built for enduring such sorrow, I had to wonder which place was the worst one to breathe in after all.
I avoided my windows and stared at myself in a mirror I would not hurt myself to break, trying to recognise the person I used to be in the tired shadows and sunken in cheeks and only finding something more that is difficult to remember.
It is not that I no longer care or love or that I have forgotten how to show it; it is just that the path I used to walk on with a heart that could sometimes beat with enough calm to make me see things clearly is a road I cannot remember how to reach while looking at the world through a haze of tears.
I still care about you, I only do not know how to make my body do the things that made you happy, right now, and I still love you, I only cannot move my tongue under the weight of all the words I need to have said ages ago to tell you how much and why and how.
I never stopped, I only fell off the place where I needed to be to be able to show you everything I want to show you, how to find the voice to tell you everything I want you to know.
It is as if my body detached itself from its shadow, and somehow my soul got left with the shadow instead; all aimless confusion without the body it was meant to follow.
I’m trying to get back into drawing things because not drawing doesn’t make me feel any better, so here’s my warrior lady Norn and Combo’s tiny little elementalist, who is so adorable I want to pick her up and wear her like a backpack. :|
Swedish button smash time: wrintibkkföpåargäbnkurhokgjprolglhjh because omg aaah so adorable (and also that nose) omg thank you this is making me smile so much aah :O
So everyone who has observed me playing this game knows of my habit of just randomly taking off into some random direction, occasionally going “aaaah ore”, “aaah a tree”, “oooooh mats”, “omnomnom materials” and the like. Because gathering is super important even though I have full stacks of pretty much everything by now I just cannot stop okay
With this setup, Gis would not need to run anymore, just point the way :O
Is there some sort of boycott idea in the works yet? I haven’t found one yet, so in case there isn’t, I’m starting one myself. I’m actively seeking reblogs here. I want to do something about this.
On January 31st, I am going to begin a full boycott of tumblr in protest. Not only will I not access the site for 48 hours, I will uninstall the app on my Droid, and I will be actively posting on my other frequently used sites saying that these changes are unacceptable. Yes, I will be publicly decrying it.
I will also be sending an email of protest, telling them to listen to what users actually say and implement what users actually ask for.
I encourage all of you to do the same.
From 12AM CST on January 31st to 12AM CST February 2nd, abandon tumblr, and send an email telling them what you think. If you have an app on your phone or mobile device, uninstall it, at least for those two days. If we can turn this into a mass movement, we might be able to make a change.
We don’t want tumblr to be like Twitter. We already have Twitter. We don’t want it to be like Facebook. We already have Facebook.
We want tumblr to stay like tumblr.
Don’t make us move back to LiveJournal, tumblr. No one wants that, but if you force us, we won’t hesitate to leave. In fact, there are enough smart coders on this site that we might not even need LJ. If you leave us high and dry, we’ll have no choice but to return the favor.
I will be doing this. I will move to update on LJ during this time, and post fics on AO3. I am Combination_NC on both places, for those who want to keep up with Combo’s Picture Diary/Mourning progress/Fic/Reviews/Etc.
To have been so dismissed by support while reporting bugs that makes the layout unable to load and use as intended on slower connections makes me feel even more turned off from this (I also got an automatic feedback request - tell me how well you did with helping me, tumblr? Really? This a thing you want me to elaborate on?) than I was by just how the update looks and functions. I know tumblr has a history of more or less not listening to their user base ever, and I feel like this boycott is the only way to get their attention long enough to have them realise that this is not working out for a lot of us. The fact that a hack was up as soon as the day before yesterday that makes the posting revert to the old style speaks a lot of what the user base wants; and this is not it.
Here is a good petition, but it is not even close to having enough signatures to have them lift even an eyebrow, I feel. With a user base the size of tumblr, we would likely need millions to be noticed. Please sign it if you are able!
This is just not working for me as it is now. If it is not working out for you, either, please let them know!
Something crossed my dash today that started me wondering about expectations and their possible intersection with perception. So I went and peered at characters in-game in as close to identical lighting conditions as I could manage; obviously there will be some variance.
I realise that this is a sensitive topic, and I would therefore like to start off by stating I have done my best to phrase things as well as possible but as a mostly self-taught non-native English speaker I simply do not have the same grasp of vocabulary/tone as a native speaker would, so there are times when I phrase things in a way that does not work in English. If this is the case somewhere and I come off as hurtful or offensive in any way I sincerely apologise and ask if you could please point it out so I can correct the mistake and not repeat it.
Secondly, I am white, and this is in no way intended to be me attempting to speak for or over someone. I hesitated over posting this, but as I have not seen it mentioned in the other reblogs, I thought I would mention how I have viewed him.
I sculpt, so my observation comes from what I have learnt during my time studying anatomy (with a focus on faces). Not just by staring at books but doing a lot of literal hands-on exercises of touching a lot of different faces to feel the many differences in bone structure encountered in different people, some very subtle, others less so. And from looking at his bone structure and not exclusively focusing on skin tone, I had always thought he was meant to be of indigenous people of North America heritage. There is so much variety when it comes to bone structure, especially in the case of people of mixed background, but there are still some general outlines that are more typical for people descending from a certain area.
So looking at Sebastian, that was what I thought, and considering the history of indigenous people in NA I really liked the fact that he was the party member of royal blood.
I keep seeing all these cutie Amells on my dash so I figured class could take a backseat to me drawing them. :d
Okay so what is cuter than one Amell? A… you know, what do you even call it when a bunch of Amells cluster together? An Adorable Amell Assortment? 4xA? I have no idea but now we need a word for it!
because oh my goodness how cute is this all the little Amells flocking together aah (I love Farrah’s expression and also how is Fand so freckly cute) and tiny little Tara is there being the tiniest of Amells and omg she has her mermaid helmet and she looks so happy aaah thank you so much for putting her in here aah
cuteness overload :O
Since the inability to properly load the expanding pop-up windows with slower internet connections is kind of a huge deal, I contacted tumblr support to notify them of the problem. I told them I have tried with the latest version of three separate browsers, on two different computers (remember old Binky who froze a lot? I dug him out to test! Result: exact same issue, only with much more crashing whenever I tried to open the pop-up), and without tumblr extensions. I specifically dug out Binky because I had no extension installed there, which is why I suspect this is indeed an issue with the design not working well with slower connections and older machines, and not the dreaded missing e.
To my surprise, I actually received a reply! To my utter lack of surprise it appears to be an automated answer, indicating no one actually read my message.
“Hello,
Can you try using another web browser as a test?
Are you running the latest version of your preferred browser? Older editions of most mainstream browsers will not properly display the new post forms, which can cause problems with your overall posting experience. If your browser is up to date, what is the version number and operating system version you are using?
In addition, running extensions, add-ons, or plug-ins in your web browser may cause problems with Tumblr’s new post forms.
If you disable all extensions, add-ons, or plug-ins in your web browser, does the problem you’re having remain? Even if they are extensions you consider necessary, this will help us diagnose where the conflict is.
Different web browsers have different steps to configure add-ons and extensions, but you can consult the Help files or documentation for your specific web browser if you need a little help.
Thanks,
Seth”
Since I stated in my message to them that I have tried with the latest version (of three different browsers, no less) and without extensions, it is difficult to not feel like they did not actually read anything, and suspect that this is just the message they send out to a lot of inquires they get right now.
I guess I will need to answer something along the lines of “since I already stated this has been tried without any tumblr extensions, I assume you want me to disable all non-tumblr specific plugins as well. I have thus disabled my spell-check add-on. The problem persists”.
Only I suppose I should spell it all wrong, to make sure they understand I did, in fact, turn off spell-check, just for them.
So I crawl out of my blanket fort of mourning to actually do things and post some long-overdue fics only to discover I have been forced into tumblr’s latest terrible beta.
There really is no way I can keep using a site like this; the way it breaks saviour makes it impossible for me to go on the dash at all due to me having triggers that can set me off so badly it traps me in flashbacks. The fact that posting is now clumsy, cluttered, ugly and unstable is just icing on the cake that— actually wait that is a terrible analogy, because cake is delicious.
Tumblr, you fail worse than Jowan.
This is what makes me angry the most about the new update. I don’t often get triggered by things (the only thing that really does is not a common topic of discussion), but I have plenty of friends that do. To them, Tumblr Savior is not merely a convenience like it is for me, it’s a necessity if they want to use this website. And making it so Tumblr Savior doesn’t work? What the fuck, Tumblr.
This is the main reason I’d like to see the Tumblr staff apologize to the Tumblr community for this. Because yeah maybe the new interface is horrible and all that, but triggering a lot of people? That shit isn’t cool, Tumblr.
I installed Xkit, which seems to be warding off the update for now, but it just gave me a warning that the update fucked it over, too. If you don’t log out, that holds it off for a while, too.
I’m only seeing parts of the update, but Savior and Xkit are by and large still working for the moment, but I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to squeak by without getting landed with the new layout.
I get that they do not want us to use third-party things (not because it makes sense because we need those for a reason, but they sure like to beat us over the head with it), but when they are going to throw us into a beta version without our consent, I think it would have been decent of them to warn us about it first. I do not expect them to actually be decent, or to apologise, or anything, since that is not how tumblr seems to roll, but having been able to avoid my triggers right now would just… have made a world of difference to me.
For me, Xkit is not working properly - I had it installed before (I really, really want to avoid my triggers, because being set off can easily ruin an entire day, so I got both), so there are no working safety nets for me right now.
To top it off, the writing popup does not expand as I write, so to post anything I have to first write it in a text document elsewhere and then paste it in. My internet connection just cannot handle this new design, and that is a huge problem. I just, what? Tumblr, what.
And apparently all my drafts are deleted.