#A Grey Start

[greykolla-art]

If Cursed Cat Alastor talked I imagine it would say so many upsetting things.👌

[sixth-light]

so one of the things I was vaguely aware of before reproducing was that people hold a lot of anxiety around the gender of babies and 'wrongly' gendering babies (i.e. failing to guess correctly based on their clothes and appearance what their genital configuration is) and having now had a baby: wow, yes, they really do.

I take an extremely laissez-faire approach to baby clothes because like, they are constantly being thrown up on and grown out of and so on, what matters is that they are clean and easy to put on and I am not spending $$$$$ on them. as long as the colour/design is not directly offensive, it's fine. what this means is that people are quite frequently 'misgendering' the baby and then falling over themselves to apologise about it.

and, like, I haven't even had a chance to dress him in anything pink yet; this is based on rules I didn't expect like 'anything with flowers or sparkly bits on it is for girls only'. equally, I do not care when this happens because it's an irrelevancy, but THEY care to make sure I am not offended. so I have started telling them "look, he's only [x] months old; his gender is baby."

and you know what? you'd be surprised how many otherwise average heterosexual people process this and go "huh, yeah, I guess it is." there is a tiny amount of hope for the future after all.

[hinamie]

oversaturate

[lokh]

guess who just finished their taz balance relisten

[onlysushicat]

This took more time than I imagined

[silkenrat]

Jennifer’s Body (2009) Dir. Karyn Kusama

Helter Skelter (2012) Dir. Mika Ninagawa

I, Tonya (2017) Dir. Craig Gillespie

The Substance (2024) Dir. Coralie Fargeat

[chevalierlogan]

"In War, Victory. In Peace, Vigilance. In Death, Sacrifice."

[yrsonpurpose]

jane & guildford + not wanting to leave each other

[birdy-reblog]

Jean’s tired of the scogan slow burn.

[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?

[julietcpulet]

one of my favorite things about my lady jane, it proved that having couples be married and in love doesn’t make the plot boring

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

Guildford + Jane Parallels/Foreshadowing/Moments Of Growth (Season 1)

[bixels]

I think 90% of my gripes with how modern anime looks comes down to flat color design/palettes.

Non-cohesive, washed-out color palettes can destroy lineart quality. I see this all the time when comparing an anime's lineart/layout to its colored/post-processed final product and it's heartbreaking. Compare this pre-color vs. final frame from Dungeon Meshi's OP.

So much sharpness and detail and weight gets washed out and flattened by 'meh' color design. I LOVE the flow and thickness and shadows in the fabrics on the left. The white against pastel really brings it out. Check out all the detail in their hair, the highlights in Rin's, the different hues to denote hair color, the blue tint in the clothes' shadows, and how all of that just gets... lost. It works, but it's not particularly good and does a disservice to the line-artist.

I'm using Dungeon Meshi as an example not because it's bad, I'm just especially disappointed because this is Studio Trigger we're talking about. The character animation is fantastic, but the color design is usually much more exciting. We're not seeing Trigger at their full potential, so I'm focusing on them.

Here's a very quick and messy color correct. Not meant to be taken seriously, just to provide comparison to see why colors can feel "washed out." Top is edit, bottom is original.

You can really see how desaturated and "white fluorescent lighting" the original color palettes are.

[Remember: the easiest way to make your colors more lively is to choose a warm or cool tint. From there, you can play around with bringing out complementary colors for a cohesive palette (I warmed Marcille's skintone and hair but made sure to bring out her deep blue clothes). Avoid using too many blend mode layers; hand-picking colors will really help you build your innate color sense and find a color style. Try using saturated colors in unexpected places! If you're coloring a night scene, try using deep blues or greens or magentas. You see these deep colors used all the time in older anime because they couldn't rely on a lightness scale to make colors darker, they had to use darker paints with specific hues. Don't overthink it, simpler is better!]

[rhiangalaxy]

Shen Jiu and his plant son Shen Yuan <3 (ft. a bonus of YGY and LGG's very different methods of babysitting)

[ID: A Scum Villain Drawing. Shen Jiu holds Shen Yuan is his arms, staring towards the audience with a slightly scary, unamused expression. In his arms, Shen Yuan, dressed in Qing Jing teals and greens, appearing to be around the ages of four-six with a darker skin tone, a mole on his forehead and a green sprout popping out of his head, is gazing and reaching out amazedly at a demonic butterfly. End ID]

[ID: A Scum Villain Drawing. The top half depicts Yue Qingyuan, cradling a Shen Yuan that is wrapped in blankets and smiling. Then leaning in to give him a forehead kiss. The bottom half depicts Liu Qingge lifting SY by the ankle, much to SY's delight, and then moving him around to the back of himself with a faintly amused expression. End ID]

[filobooster]

hiya girls

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???