#☆ get to know me

[springsylph]

Once you get this, you have to say five things you like about yourself, publicly. Then you have to send this to ten of your favourite followers ( positivity is cool~)🌈🌈

Hi Wren!!! 🖤

hi eilidh! 🥹 thanks so much for sending this in <3

i can’t count past five, so this works out great actually:

1. i really like my upper body! used to be super insecure about it growing up, but now that i’m (kind of) dancing professionally, they’re my greatest strength (still can’t do pushups though).

2. also the size of my eyes?? they’re pretty big, apparently.

3. definitely have to add in the independence.

4. i’ve become a lot more appreciative of my willingness to just “let my brain do the work,” if that makes sense lmao

5. i like that i’m able to remain sensible in times of high stress! (only in large groups. being sensible solo is a no go until further notice.)

[tawnysoup]

Found my fav Slay the Princess route recently. Dragon my beloved. Your horrifying beak mouth was an impossible-to-refuse lip syncing challenge 💖

Shoutouts to @blacktabbygames for making such a cool game!

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[anistarrose]

Disability is not a punishment, but I think the world would be genuinely improved if every person involved in writing or regulating ingredient labels was mysteriously inflicted with at least one food allergy falling under each of the following categories: "natural flavors," "modified food starch," "artificial flavors," "spices," and "color." Down with ingredient labels so vague that they defeat the entire fucking point.

[apricior]

i remember when i was a child internet safety was like "if you even hint at the country you live in, you're gonna get kidnapped and murdered", and nowadays it is encouraged or even necessary to give corporations every single personal detail if you want to use anything because if they can't sell your information they cry so hard they throw up

[heyhanibee]

clocked

[mimimar]

(open pages for better image quality)

the moment I heard elphaba's delivery of "there's a girl i know..." in i'm not that girl i knew i had to draw this comic, i strongly recommend listening to it while you read for the full experience!

this comic is a companion to this piece (which was inspired by glinda's delivery of the same line in the i'm not that girl reprise).

pages 1-4 are from elphie's pov, pages 5-8 are from glinda's.

prints of individual pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

flower meanings in order of appearance:

[napping-sapphic]

take your clothes off and get on the bed what no we aren’t having sex right now we’re cuddling and pressing every inch of skin together as close as possible for the next six hours

[agnesandhilda]

if female top nudity weren't viewed as inherently sexually explicit. oh brother. I would be letting those puppies hang like you wouldn't believe

[lazylittledragon]

can't believe we're all adults being forced into the club penguin level of censorship in 2024

[wildemoth]

Gender is a performance and it’s time to play the music it’s time to light the lights it’s time to meet the muppets on the muppets show tonight

[pangur-and-grim]

one thing that took me embarrassingly long to learn is "sometimes when people say things, they will not be true."

I used to tell people about this revelation and they'd be like yeah.....duh.....but like, why wouldn't my base assumption be that you're communicating to me in a straightforward manner. anyway, I get scammed a lot.

[fanaticalthings]

Bruce Wayne except he texts like an ominous boomer

wdym you can't tell if he's threatening them?

Based on this post by @mysterycitrus :)

<- Prev Masterlist Next ->

Bonus:

Happy birthday, Tim 🥰

[ghosted-jazz]

Doey's 2/3 angsty traumatized teen, I think he'd love MCR

[sparrowlucero]

speaking of how to train your dragon and creature design, the shift from the really naturalistic art direction and character animation for the first movie's toothless- the face getting flatter, the eyes bigger and closer together, getting rid of the little realistic details like the dust collecting between the scales, the pink splotching where the scales end at the nostrils, the muted markings, the animation making a shift from largely realistic animal behavior to much more anthropomorphic- is such a huge downgrade to me, made worse because it's subtle in such a way that you will sound insane if you mention it

(huge L for the "the audience's capacity to find a creature cute and empathetic and expressive is directly proportional to how much it looks like a human baby" principle of character design because the first one is so so much cuter)