fleeting thoughts from a chronic ghost
Something I have had to keep learning is that not everything has to be A Big Production. All-or-nothing comes naturally to me; moderation and pacing myself, not so much.
Relatedly: I am not going to make some big explanatory megapost about why I have been effectively M.I.A. forrrr -checks inbox- ~17 weeks now! Nor will I make some grandiose promise about exactly when and where and how I return! Heck it!!!
Anyway, neat things from recent, because I read this post about gratitude and noticing the little things and doing it is what prompted me to log in again today. Specifically:
Thankful — something I’m thankful for that day
Humor — anything funny from the day
Affirmation — something I did well that day, no matter how small
Noticing Care — remembering a moment of care around me (including self-care)
Knowledge — anything I learned that day
word’s most hasty status update
still here! got sucked into the RP void however so I am just about anywhere but this account, whoops.
pitfalls of being an all-or-nothing person…! gonna try to rein that in a little over the next week-ish, though, which will ideally mean catching up on the reading page and comments and such :,y always so much to do and so little that sets my dopamine receptors on fire, which is a very sustainable way to live….
some reads
This was supposed to be a short post (“some reads, some writes”) and then the reading rec section turned into like, four-ish (not-quite-)book reviews in a bigass trenchcoat. Cut cut, motherfuckers.
reads
Random recs from recent, all of which made me Think for some reason or another: ( ✂️ )
screams at social media
oh shit how long has DW had a markdown editor. probably since forever but that makes it a thousand times easier to just bang out a post, baller
anyway hi I haven’t substantially touched this website in years, but the recent twitter meltdown (and, uh, a spontaneous late-night message to one artist I guest-followed over there) made me realize that I still crave internet interaction well, interaction in general lbr more than I strictly care to admit, and every other site is a burning hellscape and social media numbers do Bad Things to my brain in general so here,, i mcFuckign am again.
at least for now. we shall see if it lasts.
Uhhhh I am intentionally writing this in unpolished lowercase because the perfectionist “you have to use this space for Substantial Blog Posts” part of my brain is still active indeed, so why not make a cursory attempt at banishing that demon. besides that I made myself a pseudo-guestbook-thing a while back, and Omori game has been consuming a majority of my brain forrrrr -checks watch- nearly half a year now, so that is cool. here is a related shameless self-promo. i am So fucking sad about the majority of the fanbase being “anti” or adjacent you have no idea
anyway yeah that’s it for this shout to the void; currently-stickied about is old but still more or less relevant (everything still applies, I would just phrase some bits differently nowadays)
oh yeah, and someone dubbed a comic I made! it has made my entire week thus far, I still love it to pieces. check it out!!!!
a’ight that is all~ ✌️
edit: you know what no I’m not done yet but have a “readmore”
State of the Flyleaf (May edition)
Guess which sucker finished college (part one)? This one. Guess which sucker got their personal website up on Github proper and hasn’t touched it since? …Yeah.
If you look at absolutely nothing else in this post, please appreciate Hte Art: this abomination I cobbled together last week, and a quick animation practice hand from earlier today:
( gif )
Anyway, the fun part: LINKDUMP AND DISCOMBOBULATED RAMBLING.
( linkdump and discombobulated rambling )there are no good puns for “april”
There’s a small handful of things I’ve wanted to write about since my last post, but none of those thoughts have come together into a coherent standalone ramble just yet. March kinda passed in a blur, but some media highlights:
- Jack Stauber. Holy shit, Jack Stauber!!! Was introduced by a friend and this was the first video I watched, which among other recent uploads made for one hell of an impression. He makes these trippy VHS animations using (and often combining) surreal claymation, live action, MS Paint-looking animation, and some of the most bizarre music I’ve heard in a while. Consider it a “creator chose not to warn” experience. If that sounds up your alley, dive the heck in. Pick a video, any video; there’s no continuity.
- Also, not everything is chaotic glitchiness! He’s got some full-length songs too, several of which are used in <1-minute videos. Of the calmer songs, “Today Today” is hands down my favorite. But if you want to spend a good few minutes wondering what the fuck you just watched, consider “Lima Bean Man” and (volume warning) “Shattered Molars”. For a dubiously-healthy tonal mix, also check out his series for Adult Swim, Shop!
- On a more mainstream note, the new Mary Poppins was whimsical and I’m sure it satisfied the nostalgic yearnings of people who grew up with the original. Personally I couldn’t unsee/hear the chimney sweep guy as “wow, that’s Lin Manuel-Miranda Hamiltonmusical!”, the 2d sequence just made me sad Disney’s not making fully 2d movies anymore, and I will forever be annoyed on Travers’ (the original Mary Poppins author) behalf courtesy Saving Mr. Banks. But anyway.
- *Also saw Captain Marvel, which did its job as a superhero power fantasy But With A Woman. If I think back on it too long I start poking more and more writing holes in it, but it was fun while it lasted and Carol and her “best friend” were in lesbians fight me on this.
- BUT. FINALLY SOME GOOD FUCKING MARVEL courtesy Into the Spiderverse, and yes I jumped on the bandwagon real late with this one but W O W. WISH I’D SEEN THAT IN THEATERS. It really felt like a high-budget passion project from start to finish and I would LOVE to see more movies with experimental cgi animation like this!!
In other news, I’ve finally succumbed to using markdown to write posts. Prior to this I’ve been using HTML in a word doc Because I CanTM; links were fun to code, as you can imagine. Still, that whole Jekyll/GitHub thing uses markdown for the main content, and while I have no problem reading HTML it is less of a pain in the ass pulling up the guide + the recommended WYSIWYG editor.
Oh, and as for why I’m talking code again, and the main reason I finally logged into Dreamwidth in the first place? Personal! website! is now! a thing!!! \o/ And it only took like five hours of hyperfocus! Granted, I don’t quite know what to use it for, but I’m gonna put that off give it a day or two. If it still looks Acceptable with fresh eyes, I’ll finally get that sucker on Github for easier updating.
…Not coincidentally, I am also facing a minor crisis to the tune of “do I keep my Professional Art Portfolio completely separate from my Internet Shenanigans or say fuck it and unite it all under the banner of a-flyleaf,” so that’s been fun. It is a bridge that needs to be crossed sooner than later. BUT FOR NOW that sure is a thing that finally got coded! There’s a marginally more interesting preview to the left; click for fullsize. Images from Duolingo’s amazing April Fool’s offer and the webcomic Morally Grey.
…I feel like thre was supposed to be some kind of concluding paragraph to this but it got lost in the midst of coding shenanigans. Whoops.
*EDIT 7/30/19: Oh hey, clearing out some old notes and found the post-watch thoughts! Here ya go.( unedited and raw )
input[type="mistake"]
Made a couple small edits to that post, mainly for phrasing tweaks and self-linking, but I’m keeping the original title as a record of my FoolishnessTM.
Anyway, I should definitely not be awake right now and don’t have much to report, but While I’m Here: even though I skimmed around procrastinating for a couple hours first, ya nerd finally managed to focus on some not-last-minute homework for like three hours straight \o/ The bar is in the ground and I really hope I’m not jinxing myself with that, but hey! Progress!!
On another coding note: excuse me did I really not notice I’ve been using Times New Roman instead of a not-default font this whole time. That is a SHAM and a DISGRACE >8V Fixed that now, and made some other code tweaks for good measure.
…By the way, is it cool around here to have testing accounts/communities? I seriously wanna dive into Dreamwidth’s code at some point, maybe sooner than later now that I know how to poke around the source on mobile, but Would Prefer Not To wreck my own journal in the process. Hmm.
whether it’s “cool” or not I might go ahead and do it anyway. no rules no gods
And in that moment, Vivian knew she fucked up.
*By my standards, based on what I’ve been posting here. I’m not holding myself to a weekly update post or anything, but if the timing fits...!
One of two new library reads of the day was The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, because I’ve read some scattered praises of her method and did not realize she has a book. While I can’t quiiite follow Kondo’s tips as much as I’d like to (she emphasizes discarding by category for your entire house, not one room at a time, and I very much do not own the house I live in so that’s not an option), it did prompt me to clear out every book I own. I actually have a free shelf now! And a big donation pile for the library or local charity or wherever!! Also reclaimed my gosh dang bedroom after various circumstances shoved my work area to a less ideal room from which there is minimal respite from background noise!!!
Anyway, library-work and tidying-work took up a majority of the day. So far so good. And while I could have done some assignment work, the load ain’t bad this week so I treated myself to the second book, Marvel’s The Vision.
I am not a big Marvel/DC fan, to be clear. I don’t dislike them, per say, but there’s so much got dang history and my interest in most* superhero stories isn’t big enough to overcome that intimidation factor. Mostly. I mean, I read and enjoyed Watchmen, but its DC tie-ins are like... absolute bare minimum.
(*By which I mean “mainstream,” which I know makes me sound like a pretentious prick but it’s true! Can not get into the movies and the comics don’t usually catch my eye either.)
Point is, Vision looked comprehensible enough as a standalone, I liked the Incredibles-esque premise, so what the heck. There goes my evening.
Not sure if I’ll write up a more comprehensive review or leave it at this, but my thoughts in sum are:
- Pacing was pretty good, especially at the beginning. What a foreboding tone! As the forward states, this story takes itself pretty dang seriously, diving into ~the big questions~ about humanity and all that jazz. If anything, I found it a bit too far up its own ass at times, but I’m the last person to complain about pretentiousness. The unnatural dialogue also makes sense coming from sorta-not-really-robots.
- As expected, there were heavy ties to larger Avengers lore from the getgo. I can’t really complain about this because it’d be like ranting about people with powers in superhero stories, but it nonetheless wasn’t my cup of tea. The story could still work if you swapped out the Avengers for $genericHeroTeam, but it doesn’t care to try. So like, solid addition to the franchise, probably, but it doesn’t work as a standalone as well as I’d hoped.
- Having said that, my interest faltered when problems with the Avengers and Ultron’s family and all that lore connection started coming to the forefront about midway through. Until then they were more expositional matters than anything. Again, don’t really have the right to complain, but. The wife and daughter deserved better. as they usually do.
- Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the reading experience as a whole, but by the end my thoughts are It Was Okay. It’s like an angstier Incredibles if you swapped out “supers” for synthetic people and threw in a bunch of corporate tie-ins. I was particularly not thrilled by the pitch letter (which, among other process work, takes up like half the book), which at the end pretty much says “yeah, we’re writing this to sell a new franchise,” which sorta puts a damper on the Serious Humanity-Questioning Work thing. Insert conversation about the artistic merit of commercial work here.
- Anyway though, reviewing the story on its own merits and pretending they totally weren’t doing callbacks for like an entire issue: cool story. Genuinely surprised me at moments and the interplay of narrative and panel imagery is interesting. “How far people will go for family” is a neat theme to take in this direction even if it leaves a bit to be desired in favor of Doomed Super Antics. Is Virginia okay. Jesus christ, the neighbors deserved better, but I really like how they were characterized at the beginning—other side characters, with extensive biographical anecdote dropping, less so. Overall tightly-plotted with neat character motivations. I’m not sold on the franchise but I gave it to a relative, who’s a bigger Marvel/DC fan, to check out.
Anyway, for the shortest month of the year, February has felt long >:V Progress on [redacted] and today’s cleaning/reading spree have been the big highlights. I know it’s a bit early for an end-of-month roundup, but that’s pretty much all I have to report and I dunno if I’ll write again within the next five days, so... here’s to March clearing the
This week’s post has been brought to you by smug (smug mug).
This is absolutely the best way I could possibly represent myself. It is a constant mood. The highres is saved to my computer as “me watching tumblr die.png” and I hate that the only source I can find for it is this twitter comment, because whoever made it is a godsend and deserves all the praise.
Anyway! Been thinking of taking some doodle requests over here like I did on tumblr, specifically for this prompt because it’s like an unofficial yearly tradition at this point. My to-do list says no. My insatiable urge to doodle something for a new crowd says yes. Hmm. honestly just drop a suggestion in the comments if you have one, no promises it’ll be done this week but why not, any characters any fandom ;V and maybe I’ll do romance this time because life’s too short to be a shipper in denial
Not much else to report from this week except school and freaking out over school, but on a nicer note, happy Femslash February! Anyone draw/write something for the occasion? How goes the month in general? I’m here to talk to people and not just to the void I sWEAR,,
if there were two faces on a guy and one looked in the opposite direction would that be fucked up or
Cons of Dreamwidth’s Reading page being available logged out: goodbye, need to log in at all, except maybe once a week when the Post Idea hits!
Anyway, that sure was a month that happened. Because I am probably inevitably going to freak out later over “wasting” my entire break, here’s some stuff I’ve been up to, in no particular order \o/
( gratuitous talking about myself )