#[ I'm calling it like it is tbh ]

[palarien]

sketched this out at jury duty actually

[lylahammar]

the ol art block fall back, speculative monster horse biology 😌

gonna do more for this concept, but I've been thinkin about kelpies today :3

[inkskinned]

so one of the things that's so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn't that bad for me, and you'll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that's super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.

first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.

it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.

and the thing is that you're a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.

you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you've ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.

and what's wild is that because sometimes it isn't a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you've been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they'd numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn't actually notice, because you'd thought it was a sprain.

your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn't always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it's more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there's no true way to predict how "much" something actually hurts.

in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn't mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.

in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.

so it's either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it's true that it's far more likely you will experience pain, rather than "just a pinch." and yet - there's nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it's elective, isn't it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.

you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.

once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you've been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.

and it's fucked up because the conversation is never just "hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds" - it's usually something around the lines of "well, it didn't kill you, did it?"

you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have "some" serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?

hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!

you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you're told - i didn't even want you to have this in the first place. we're told be careful what you wish for. we're told that it's our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don't like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.

we have been saying for so long - "i'm not asking you to remove the option, i'm asking you to reconsider the risk." this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn't it?

[kaiserouo]

civilian in the mall

[volumina-vetustiora]

How do you say "do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" in latin?

Does "noli dracones vexare, nam friabilis es et cum ketchup optime sapis" work?

ooh, this is fun...

I think what you have there works ok (other than that vexare implies more "violently harass" than simply "meddle with") but I'll give it my own go:

noli te immiscere rebus draconteis, quia enim facile contereris atque garo bene sapis.

"Do not mix yourself up in draconic affairs, for you are easy to crumble and taste good with garum."

[garum was an ancient fish sauce that it amuses me to call the Roman equivalent of ketchup]

[vesna-v-irkutske]

Addressing something niche and unimportant: no, Nikita didn't have "masturbating" as one of his interests on VK. In this context, it means something completely different. The full sentence reads as follows: "Music, clubs, petty robbery, booze, glue, weed, bothering nefors*, bums and other scum of the Earth." *Neformals are people who choose to live outside of generally accepted social norms and rules, they often belong to different subcultures based on their interests, views on life, or musical preferences (punks, metalheads, emos, goths, hippies, etc.)

[spark-circuit]

btw, since i'm on about Kuro Heathcliff again, did anyone see this voiceline? he's all standoffish until he notices that it's about the tattoos, then you can practically hear the grin on his face

[octylish]

Can someone get this bug off my screen

[buttercupshands]

*looking at isat ss discord* my power of being silly got out of control

or how I tried understanding rpg maker basics by literally trying to do one (1) thing I really wanted to see ever since seeing Loop unused sprites lying on wiki months ago

the reason I mentioned isat ss discord was simply bc guys were the first people who saw me trying to draw close to pixel sprite face sprite for Loop to,,, do something at some point just to see how it works

and nope I'm not making this into anything, but I really like the fact that I managed to do this

(now with video post edited into this sentence!)

[blightbright]

mythal nuance

look, i love some yikes women characters!!! have i mentioned how much i fucking adore knight-commander meredith? yeah, that genocidal zealot? sympathetic lawful evil ftw. one of my ALL-TIME FAVE CHARACTERS is mariah dillard from the luke cage TV show. she is ABUSIVE, including to her daughter, she is devastating and so well-portrayed, and she is such a terrible person AND i just adore her in her harmful flawed tragic selfhood!

flemythal? fucking love her, she's awful, she's hilarious, she's compelling, i think it's a travesty that devs didn't get kate mulgrew's voice and the flemeth appearance back in some timey-wimey fade magic way. i love how she feels at odds with herself, sometimes vengeful, sometimes regretful. i love her sweetness toward merrill and her funny interactions with purple!hawke, i love her confusion that morrigan is upset with her, i even love the YIKES ambiguous, semi-motherly, semi-loverly, intimate owner-pet vibes head stroking and nuzzling between her and solas in the DA:I end credits. OUCH.

veilguard!mythal IMO feels more like a mediocre narcissist who wants to maintain the status quo, and of course is faux "loving" AKA guilt-tripping and strings-attaching her "care." that's not badly written since it's a real thing, but she's not for me. the fact that elgar'nan presumably abused her is not super compelling to me because IMO it gives the flavor of a confederate slave-owning white woman whose husband is a piece of shit AND ALSO she still thinks slavery is fine and actively upholds and abuses her power over other people. this is not an analogy: mythal literally owns people as slaves. in my fic i try to give her some fairy queen style, wouldn't-it-feel-so-good-to-die-for-me vibes where she's liberal with her magically-hypnotic praise if you please her, to make her more inhuman and therefore interesting to me, but anyway.

i'm seeing accusations of misogyny if people love solas and hate mythal, and while we can and should critique how women characters are written and discussed, given the canon content, it's NOT an inherently misogynistic reaction to hate the character who abused a character you love. i saw a thing insisting "solas is always defined by mythal" and to respect mythal and... really? critique the writers as much as you want for setting this up, but do people really want to say we should always identify a person by their abuser's influence, or offer respect to that abuser??

are you also gonna say "morrigan is always defined by flemythal, acknowledge and respect her when talking about morri" after we know for a fact that flemythal repeatedly exposed morrigan as a child to sexual situations that resulted in violent death, encouraged her to push down her own sensitivity and feelings and focus only on power and manipulation, and morrigan tells the spirit in DA:O that she's still acting too gentle to be the real flemeth, even after smacking morrigan hard across the face and demanding morrigan show some respect? she had an influence on morrigan's life, but holy fuck does morri deserve to define her life by her own desires and her own choices and accomplishments now

if people are aware that solas was given mythal's slave markings, since she was a slaver like the other evanuris, then he burned them magically off his face when he led a slave rebellion against slavers, and hear all the clips in veilguard where she is clearly in a position of power over him, and still claim there was no abuse, idk what to tell you. you are incorrect. please consider if you have some cognitive dissonance about how much you love to hate solas (tho you can still do that even if a character has experienced abuse) and/or how much you want to enjoy mythal (tho you can still appreciate an abusive character).

[beheamothscreamoth]

Quick question for the Touchstarved fandom!! As much as we love Ais calling us 'Sparrow,' I have to ask - if you had to decide, what other bird nickname do you think he would call you/your MC? :O

For example, Ais would my Unnamed MC Daniella 'bluebird,' while he'd call my Alchemist MC Edgar 'crow' (and another OC I'm planning, Shinju, 'woodpecker!')

[sideprince]

People will hate on Snape for being mean and sarcastic with children but he was mean and sarcastic with everyone. He was just treating his students with the same respect he gave everyone else, if you think about it.

[onesnoopyaday]

I AM AT MY LIMIT

Snoopy #90

30/12/2024

description under the cut

[description: a cartoon-style drawing of Snoopy's head. Snoopy is a white dog with black ears. His eyes are shut and his mouth is a horizontal line. There are two large blue teardrops, one under each eye. The text "I am at my limit" is handwritten across the top of the image.]

[atalienart]

"Wysoki i szczupły, K. był kwintesencją elegancji, od nienagannego ubioru, szytego według najnowszej mody, przez starannie ułożone, piaskowe włosy, po sposób w jaki się trzymał."

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Serendipity should be required viewing material before anyone tries to analyze Homestuck; not only is John Cusack a universal constant, but the themes and vibes of Serendipity are so fundamentally woven into Homestuck's DNA that several of Serendipity's thesises and conversations could be lifted directly from one to the other.

In particular, the way Serendipity utilizes coincidence and circumstantially simultaneous events in order to suggest - nay, decree - that the two leads belong together, is highly reminiscent of the way Hussie uses foreshadowing, and not just for romantic couples. It's also a major window into the ultimate stance Homestuck takes with regard to romance, fate, and destiny, and also more specifically, a really good look at Karkat's own personal philosophies of romance. There's a running theme in his movies of meeting someone that perfectly matches your freak, someone you don't ever need to compromise yourself around, who brings out the best in you.

Also, some of yall need to watch a shitty romcom every once in a while and develop some emotions

[quiet-admirer]

I love it when a character gets fat as they heal and settle down and escape a bad situation, but... What's gets me even more is when a character gains a bunch of weight when they're going through a hard time - maybe from stress or comfort eating, maybe disordered eating, maybe struggling with alcohol use, or not getting access to regular meals - and then as their life stabilizes and they can reach a healthy and happy equilibrium again, healing their relationships with food or their body or substances, then they start putting on even more weight until they're huge and soft, comfortable and content, and finally, finally they can say they're happy ❤️