Carrie and Lowell (+the outtakes; I can't believe "Wallowa Lake Monster" didn't make it on the actual album) gets a lot of hype but it is genuinely one of the most moving pieces of art I've experienced in any medium. I remember listening to it the first time and then replaying and replaying it and feeling like shit for days afterward...the love; the catastrophic grief; the mixed feelings about trying to process your feelings for a parent who failed at their job of protecting and nurturing you but who you still deeply cared -- still care -- about anyway, and mourning your own broken childhood and young adulthood at the same time...yeah. it hits so close to home. I saw someone once describe that album as "feel-bad music" and LOL it kind of is, but it's so beautiful and cathartic too. i have a print on my wall of an illustrated map of oregon that shows the locations mentioned in the songs, and would like to eventually visit all of them.

thank you! <3 my biggest piece of advice is to start by writing something you find fun, and don't worry about appealing to anyone else other than yourself. the kind of idea where if you came across it in the wild you'd be giggling and kicking your legs because it makes you so happy. pure self-indulgence. i find i have the most fun when i'm writing purely to please myself and not thinking 'i wonder if [respected mutual] will like this...?' or 'is this too xyz to appeal to [shipper group]?' or 'do i actually have the skill to convey what i'm attempting to get across here?' it's fandom, it's meant to be fun, so don't put any undue pressure on yourself and just go wherever your heart takes you! your feelings for the characters and enthusiasm for the ideas are the most important thing, IMO. improvement will come naturally the more you write.

speaking of improvement, how-to-write guides can be useful but it's also easy to get bogged down in the details sometimes, and it's worth noting that guides are all written by humans with their own unique tastes and ideas that might not necessarily line up with yours, so don't take any one piece of advice as gospel. take what works for you and leave the rest. my main tip for improving on a technical level is to read, widely. a lot of aspects of a well-crafted scene can transfer across genres (for instance, one thing that i've seen discussed a lot is that sex scenes and fight scenes have a lot in common, since both rely on choreography, physical sensations, and emotional reactions), and the more you read the more you absorb different inspirations and learn what sorts of story structures, sentence constructions, characterization choices, etc work the best for you.

i hope this was somewhat helpful! good luck anon, i hope you have a blast writing your story!

sorry for taking a few days with this, I wanted to take it seriously. at the same time i'm not a professional and I don't know the specifics of your situation, so like all online mental wellness advice, take what works and leave what doesn't. <3 but based on my experience with other negative feelings spirals, some of this might be helpful:

• Do not fall into the trap of comparing your (perceived) skill level or productivity to anyone else's - it's not fair to you OR to the person you're comparing yourself to! we're all on our own creative journeys and have different creative processes, so expecting your output to be identical to anyone else's isn't realistic. you're not an AI, you're a human with unique strengths and flaws, and those both add touches to your work that makes it personal to YOU and you alone. other people can't make what you make in the same way that you make it! and so you shouldn't expect yourself to make what other people make in the same way they make it. also keep in mind that you don't know what's going on on the other side of the screen; maybe that person who's cranking out a dozen finished art pieces a week has a messy personal life and is using art as a distraction, for example. I think it's incredibly important to treat both yourself and the person you're jealous of with compassion at every step. The 'sour grapes' method of dealing with jealousy (where you want what something else has and realize that it's unattainable, so instead you internally shit-talk it in order to reassure yourself that not having it is actually Good and that the person who has the thing you want is Bad) is a natural inclination for some people, but neither healthy nor helpful in the long run, so it's good to challenge needlessly unkind thoughts (INCLUDING needlessly unkind thoughts directed toward yourself!!!) and steer yourself away from that type of coping if you find yourself gravitating toward it a lot.

• Unplug. 'Touch grass' is used pretty dismissively a lot of the time, but it's also good advice. go outside if you're able to, and if that's not in the cards try to spend some time doing an indoor hobby that's not related to fandom at all, at least a few times a week minimum. This can distract you so when you're ready to come back to fandom it will feel like less pressure and have fewer negative feelings hanging over it. I think this one might work particularly well if what's sparking your jealousy is something like follower count - disconnecting from the grind of social media might help reset your brain a bit.

• Finally, if there's someone who you just can't make yourself be rational about no matter how hard you try, who sets off your insecurities or just makes you feel bad about yourself in a way that you can't cope with at this point in time, it's always okay to unfollow, mute, or block them. temporarily or permanently. even if they didn't do anything 'wrong.' Someone can be perfectly wonderful and still bring out terrible feelings in you through no fault of their own, and deciding to curate your online hobby space in order to step away from those feelings is fine!

take care anon, I hope some of this helped or at least didn't completely waste your time orz

Mob is into come but in a way where he doesn't even realize it's a kink, he just thinks that's The Way Sex Is for everyone lmao. Like the first time they do anything other than hands/frot Reigen pulls out a condom and Mob is openly confused and disappointed - if Reigen is clean and he's a virgin then why?? if there's dick going into mouth or ass then in his mind there's GOT to be come and shared fluids or else there's no point. the intimacy and the physical proof of the pleasure both appeal to him on a level he can't even really articulate, he just knows he wants Reigen's come on him, in him, and he wants his all over and inside of Reigen too.

Reigen is into praise, both giving and receiving. He wants to feel valued and prioritized. I feel like he'd also be into occasional rougher sex, specifically being the one getting roughed up haha - but he realizes that Mob would be freaked out by the thought of hurting him, even only as part of a scene, so it takes a long long time for them to get to the point where he even brings it up. (Mob would also suck at roleplay, dear god.)

both of them enjoy their size difference :3

ty anon, I'm glad you've had fun with it! I love that people have seemed to enjoy it, running it is a favorite part of wintertime for me now <3

I can't take credit for the original idea since stocking-stuffer and giftbox fests have existed for a while, dating back to livejournal days, but I wanted to make one specifically for mobsai because i love the series so much and wanted more fandom events and fanwork for it to exist hehe. part of my motivation was also making myself feel better, tbh: I wanted to make it open to everyone and all ships because I always felt sad when I'd find what looked like a cool fandom event and then read in the faq that my otp was banned, so i wanted to Be The Change, as the saying goes.

causally answers this more than a whole fucking year later

after Mob and Dimple's first meeting, we see Mob's first explosion of the series. however even though he burns through all his rage and his emotional overload eventually fizzles out, he's left with pretty intense feelings of negative self-worth ("I'm...terrible") and his internal stress meter is still elevated. It's explicitly shown that it only drops to zero after he talks things over with Reigen, when Reigen offers some characteristically idiosyncratic life advice and points out that a trait of Mob's that Mob's previously seen as only negative is actually a STRENGTH in some situations, and that his unique view of the world is what allowed him to return the (LOL) members to their normal lives. :3

THIS QUESTION IS SO HARD. with the disclaimer that my bird knowledge is most extensive for north american species...

mob is difficult. i feel like he should something small and kinda boring-looking, but then there's the question of his psychic powers... so perhaps he'd be a junco (common as dirt, small, cute in a vague way, does best in flocks) that occasionally becomes an osprey (big, fast, not exactly colorful but still striking and distinctive, predatory and intimidating-looking but not really a danger to other birds). or maybe everyone assume he's a sparrow because he's small and dull and unremarkable in a "yeah, that sure is a bird" way, but he's still in his juvenile plumage and will soon reveal himself as something entirely different...

my corvid bias says reigen would be a jay - loud, colorful, smart, sociable, sneaky, hilarious, obnoxious. has favorite foods, but isn't picky. if he and mob were in the same tree, your attention would almost certainly be on him unless you were specifically looking for unremarkable little dudes small enough to hide behind a clump of leaves.

i spent entirely too long thinking about this and still feel like i could come back to it in an hour and have a completely different answer haha