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Being jumpy is so embarrassing, like I can be a perfectly self-aware and intelligent individual who understands I'm safe and at the same time the dryer goes off loudly when I happen to have my headphones off and I briefly slip the surly threads of gravity because lizard brain thinks I'm In Danger

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Here is a happy child....

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roommates getting top surgery and they put a tracking chip on him and now im getting updates like hes a pizza

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Just make it exist first, you can make it good later

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That’s it I don’t need anything else from social media this week.

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No idea if I ever posted this here. Old art from a couple years back about a little assistant to an underworld ferryman who would talk about their day with their boss when they came back from work.

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I think the thing about a lot of disingenuous arguments about what should and shouldn't be allowed and what's morally important in terms of fandom discussion or ships or whatever, boils down to an insecurity best described in metaphor.

Imagine you go to a restaurant with someone. The expectation is that they will look at a menu and place an order. They may have a special request that the waitstaff can or can't accommodate. They may have to stop you before you even get to the restaurant and let you know that they have a need that cannot be met there, and has to be done elsewhere.

All of this requires them to honestly tell you, and the waiter, what they want to eat. They have to say, "I think I'll have the chicken sandwich." If they do this, whatever their actual order or preference is, it's ok. Yes, there are obvious bad faith edge cases. It will not be hunky dory if they ask you to serve them a human heart. And there are cases that YOU might not be comfortable with- say you're a vegetarian and are uncomfortable with them eating meat right in front of you, "hey, can you have something that's not meat while the two of us specifically are eating together? I understand and respect if you have the chicken on your own time."

But it critically hinges on the other person's willingness to tell you that they want a chicken sandwich.

Imagine if instead you go to a restaurant with someone and they unpocket a sharpie and start scratching out menu items, with a rationale for each one. "Beef is SO bad for you. I've heard too many recalls lately about fish. Everyone knows salads are just pushed by diet culture and you can't have breakfast in the afternoon." And so on and so forth until they've scratched out everything EXCEPT the chicken sandwich. So then, the waiter, looking helplessly at the defaced and nearly useless menu, says "...I, guess you'll have the chicken, then?"

None of it was actually about morals or what's good or bad to consume. All of it was an extended exercise in using ostensibly objective arguments to whittle down the options until what remains is ONLY what they personally want to receive and consume. Because they looked at the menu with a whole bunch of options, looked at other people having burgers or salads or noodles, and parsed it as a threat. And the worst thing is, this attitude is contagious. Imagine one of the things they strike off the menu is something you wanted to eat. The easiest place from that surprised backpedal- because you came here to have some good food, not to get into an argument- is to lash right back out with moral arguments- well, what about salmonella? Screw your chicken sandwich, beef keeps better! I want my burger!

And the more this repeats, the more these attitudes feed each other. At the end of the day, the actual way for people to get what they want is for them to ask for what they want.

I said this was a metaphor, so here's the decoder ring, in the off chance it's not obvious- this is about fandom. This is about ships, and fanfictions, and ideas- this is about people refusing to say "I prefer this ship" but instead "every other ship is immoral, this ship is the only ethical correct answer, and EVERY counterargument that tells me I can't get what I want is the worst faith bad argument."

It turns into "either every single person in this restaurant eats a chicken sandwich with me, or they're asking me to allow them to eat human hearts which is exactly the same thing as them making me eat human hearts."

When, dude, nobody has time for that, this is exhausting, and no one should have to submit their life story to you for you to decide if it's ok for them to eat a burger or not. Just order your chicken sandwich and move on with life. I'm sorry if last time the waiter made fun of you or you went to somewhere that didn't sell chicken or whatever but those are problems that have nothing to do with me and my burger.

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I think the thing about a lot of disingenuous arguments about what should and shouldn't be allowed and what's morally important in terms of fandom discussion or ships or whatever, boils down to an insecurity best described in metaphor.

Imagine you go to a restaurant with someone. The expectation is that they will look at a menu and place an order. They may have a special request that the waitstaff can or can't accommodate. They may have to stop you before you even get to the restaurant and let you know that they have a need that cannot be met there, and has to be done elsewhere.

All of this requires them to honestly tell you, and the waiter, what they want to eat. They have to say, "I think I'll have the chicken sandwich." If they do this, whatever their actual order or preference is, it's ok. Yes, there are obvious bad faith edge cases. It will not be hunky dory if they ask you to serve them a human heart. And there are cases that YOU might not be comfortable with- say you're a vegetarian and are uncomfortable with them eating meat right in front of you, "hey, can you have something that's not meat while the two of us specifically are eating together? I understand and respect if you have the chicken on your own time."

But it critically hinges on the other person's willingness to tell you that they want a chicken sandwich.

Imagine if instead you go to a restaurant with someone and they unpocket a sharpie and start scratching out menu items, with a rationale for each one. "Beef is SO bad for you. I've heard too many recalls lately about fish. Everyone knows salads are just pushed by diet culture and you can't have breakfast in the afternoon." And so on and so forth until they've scratched out everything EXCEPT the chicken sandwich. So then, the waiter, looking helplessly at the defaced and nearly useless menu, says "...I, guess you'll have the chicken, then?"

None of it was actually about morals or what's good or bad to consume. All of it was an extended exercise in using ostensibly objective arguments to whittle down the options until what remains is ONLY what they personally want to receive and consume. Because they looked at the menu with a whole bunch of options, looked at other people having burgers or salads or noodles, and parsed it as a threat. And the worst thing is, this attitude is contagious. Imagine one of the things they strike off the menu is something you wanted to eat. The easiest place from that surprised backpedal- because you came here to have some good food, not to get into an argument- is to lash right back out with moral arguments- well, what about salmonella? Screw your chicken sandwich, beef keeps better! I want my burger!

And the more this repeats, the more these attitudes feed each other. At the end of the day, the actual way for people to get what they want is for them to ask for what they want.

I said this was a metaphor, so here's the decoder ring, in the off chance it's not obvious- this is about fandom. This is about ships, and fanfictions, and ideas- this is about people refusing to say "I prefer this ship" but instead "every other ship is immoral, this ship is the only ethical correct answer, and EVERY counterargument that tells me I can't get what I want is the worst faith bad argument."

It turns into "either every single person in this restaurant eats a chicken sandwich with me, or they're asking me to allow them to eat human hearts which is exactly the same thing as them making me eat human hearts."

When, dude, nobody has time for that, this is exhausting, and no one should have to submit their life story to you for you to decide if it's ok for them to eat a burger or not. Just order your chicken sandwich and move on with life. I'm sorry if last time the waiter made fun of you or you went to somewhere that didn't sell chicken or whatever but those are problems that have nothing to do with me and my burger.

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Ooh, this is a good addition and I'm gonna weigh in on it as a fellow disabled person!

Learning disabilities are complicated. Most of the ones I'm familiar with are congenital but there's a lot we don't know about how they develop, obviously. As I mentioned in the post above, I'm autistic; I also have ADHD. I did struggle in school.

I think that disabilities get muddled together with the concept of talent, but actually, they're completely different. If you are evaluating everybody on, say, how far they can run, it's a flawed system if you make everyone with a bad leg or chronic fatigue or asthma run exactly the same as the able bodied runners. You can't say what they showed you was their talent- they have an obvious spoiler that it hurts more or tires them out faster or they can't breathe as well. Learning disabilities are like that. You could be born with them, they could be developed due to conditions (see: injuries or illness) but whatever the case once they're there, they have nothing to do with "talent".

I would place disabilities into this model on the level of environment- not because they stem from environmental sources but which people and what resources are around you when you're young is going to affect how good of an accommodation you can get.

Joy is still the critical indicator here. Find ways to not punish yourself. That's extra important if you have disabilities that make it harder, and this can get REALLY complicated tangling with how much ableism affects us and the idea that we can't be smart if we struggle with [x] (it's also a problem that some topics are considered "easy" or humiliating to struggle with- think of reading, which is a skill lots of people might find hard for a lot of reasons, but saying "I'm bad at reading" as an adult out loud will have a lot of people reflexively cringe or draw terrible assumptions)

Basically disabilities and specifically unaccommodated, unsung and/or shamed disabilities make it harder to 'put the work in' and derive joy from it. The critical balm is awareness, patience, and compassion, as well as the resources to help you go. Someone with chronic fatigue or painful hands that can't draw much every day might improve slower, but it's critical they don't punish themselves for doing that.

Part of why I rail against categories like "natural talent" and "you're So Smart" is I spent years using those concepts as sticks to beat me. As a kid, I was desperate for adult approval and thought that people only liked me because I was smart. Come high school and college, my then undiagnosed adhd ate me alive until we figured out it was there and started getting me on medication. Talent is dangerously seductive to disabled people- this mythical notion of what we could "live up to" if we weren't being held back by our bodies and minds. But it's a siren song that's inevitably going to run us onto the rocks.

Pushing yourself has to come from a framework of compassion and patience. Test your limits, sure, but also give them time and space to heal, and rest, and find no shame in vulnerability.

You aren't here to compete with other people. Nobody else has any idea what your best self even looks like- you get to find that out within your own limits and unique condition. Improving your environment to help yourself thrive MUST include accommodation for your own needs. Nobody thrives when they're starving, or miserable- bodily and mental neglect will harrow people. When someone seems to succeed in the face of adversity, it's important to spare a thought to that they are still at their worst at this time- think about how many miracles they'd achieve if they weren't suffering.

One of my big operating ideologies as an educator is that talent is fake. Let me explain that.

I do not believe anyone has any inherent quality that makes them better or worse at things.

I do believe some people improve at certain things faster than others, but this is not because they secretly have a better stat in whatever. It's because every single human being has a bunch of weird little idiosyncrasies and quirks that will be unexpectedly conducive to something.

For example, I know I am, in a word, floridly lingual. Insofar as tests prove anything I have tested in some preposterously high percentiles for language skills fairly consistently throughout my entire life. I consider myself quite talented as a writer.

This cannot be meaningfully separated from a couple of facts:

-I am autistic and one of the biggest avenues I stim in is words and sounds. This means that on any given day I am spending at least part of it just messing with words.

-I grew up with parents that loved to read and loved to talk, so when they had kids they wanted to show affection or bonding with they proceeded to talk to me a lot, transcribe random silly stories I told them, play with me with accents, read books with me and talk to me about those books, etc etc.

-I was socially rewarded for being Smart Kid that read Big Books

The end result of all of this? Because of habits I had for various reasons, I put in a huge amount of work and practice into reading and writing without thinking of it that way because it didn't 'feel' like work. It just felt like "I like talking about books with my mom", it just felt like "play-pretend stories are the most reliable way for me to socialize", it just felt like standing at the counter warming up a toaster strudel going "creem cheems creem cheems" to myself because the box said 'cream cheese' on it.

I believe that talent is fake, insofar as no one is inherently good at anything. As someone who professionally juggled babies for six years, have you ever seen a baby? They're bad at everything. Of course they are. They've never done it before and they're using a body made of unshaped gelatin. By the time anyone manifests being 'good at' anything they've been encouraged and coddled and cherished and nurtured.

Which is why all of those things- that affection, that rewarding, that patience, that intellectual scaffolding to make it easier to 'put the work in'- is critically important to give to anything and anyone you want to see improvement at.

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experimenting with thinner lineart, new digs for Taylor, and a new look for Syrin.

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(source)

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Watched a youtube video talking about the False Hydra (Crispy's D&D Tavern, if you are curious), at one point pointing out that you have to literally be able to hear the song to be influenced by it (and this as a positive, that could be used to balance what otherwise would be a VERY frustrating concept to actually use in a story)

and this makes me imagine a hypothetical homebrew subclass- the Siren Hunter.

Siren Hunters are a specific group that often recruits from sole survivors of especially dangerous monster attacks. All Siren Hunters are deaf- some congenitally, some voluntarily either through self-alteration or specialized equipment. They train rigorously to resist various forms of domination / enthrallment / charm / illusions and emphasize precision and Knowing Your Enemy above all else. They maintain a standoffish reputation in general, but hold camaraderie as sacrosanct among those they trust.

Basically professional anti-mind control strike agents.

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A peek at our recent trip to the Bosch Parade in the Netherlands!

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found a super good fat body reference courtesy of adorkastock, decided to draw Nan in one of the poses.

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