#But there's something really special about these two specifically

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

I mentioned in a letter about autism that one of my special interests is sun safety which prompted multiple people to request a letter about that (which is really kind and touching!) - so let’s talk about sun safety! 

First things first: sun safety means protecting your skin from the sun or more specifically, from harmful UV radiation. There are two main reasons to protect yourself: in the short term, you avoid painful sunburns and in the long term, you lower your risk of skin cancer. 

Most skin cancers are caused by too much exposure to UV radiation. UV radiation damage is cumulative. This means that it adds up over the years - which is why it’s so important to practice sun safety every day rather than just on especially sunny days. 

Skin cancer is actually the most common cancer and it can affect people of all ages. 

Luckily, it is highly treatable if detected early  and treated promptly - but it is still a serious and even lifethreatening disease. Depending on the type of skin cancer, it can spread rapidly and it can kill you. The biggest reason to practice sun safety is to prevent that! 

I think a lot of messaging around sun safety nowadays wrongly focuses on anti-aging benefits. It’s true that UV damage can also contribute to wrinkles and skin sagging - but focusing on that can falsely portray sun safety as an optional beauty thing rather than a necessary health thing. Wrinkles and saggy skin are a normal, natural part of getting older - skin cancer isn’t.

UV radiation isn’t the same every day. You can check weather apps or websites and will find daily UV levels there. You need to practice sun safety if the level is 3 or higher. Depending on where you live, this may be nearly daily or only during summer months. Many people find it easier to just practice sun safety every day (so it becomes an automatic habit like brushing your teeth or showering, something you just do as part of your routine without needing to consciously remind yourself) while others prefer to check the UV level daily and base it on that. That’s just a matter of what works best for you personally. 

So, what does sun safety entail? You’re probably thinking of sunscreen and that is an important part of it, but not all of it! A fun way to remember all the steps is „Slip, slop, slap, seek, slide“: 

Slip into clothes

Slop on sunscreen 

Slap on a hat 

Seek shade 

Slide on sunglasses 

Slip into clothes: Skin that is covered by clothes is protected from UV rays. So a shirt with long sleeves offers more protection than one with short sleeves! (But of course you also need to prevent heatstroke, so it’s key to find a balance between covering skin and not overheating). All clothes (except for sheer or hole-y fabrics like lace) will protect you well but the ideal choice would be dense fabrics in dark colors. 

Slop on sunscreen: All skin that isn’t covered by clothes needs to be covered in sunscreen. We will go into more details on sunscreen below. 

Slap on a hat: Wear a wide-brimmed hat to protect your scalp and get some extra protection for your neck, ears and face, too (though you should also cover those body parts in sunscreen!). Baseball caps are better than nothing but do not offer the same protection for your neck and ears. 

Seek shade: It’s a myth that clouds or rain protect you from UV rays. Shade however reduces them! So, use natural shade from trees, get into a gazebo or bring a sun umbrella. 

Slide on sunglasses: You can get skin cancer around or even in the eyes as well. UV radiation can also increase your risk for other eye conditions. So make sure to get sunglasses with UV protection. Look for a label that says it offers UVA + UVB protection (more on that below). 

And of course: staying inside will protect you! Obviously you can’t stay inside forever (that would be bad for your physical and mental health in other ways) but it can be a good idea to stay home during hours with especially high UV levels (8 and above). UV levels are often highest around midday. 

Some more details on sunscreen: 

The best sunscreen brand is the one you feel comfortable using daily. Whether it’s chemical or mineral, expensive or cheap, no matter what the texture and way of application (gel, lotion, spray, roll-on etc.) is… none of that matters if you hate using it and end up not making a habit out of it. Sure, if you wanna get nerdy with it, some offer more protection than others. For example, gels or lotions usually offer more than sprays, simply because there’s more product that actually ends up on your skin rather than in the air. But if you can’t stand the feeling of lotion on your skin and will realistically only use sprays, then a spray is the best option for you! Go with the one that you actually like using. 

Much more important than the exact brand are the following criteria: 

Choose one that’s at least SPF30 but ideally SPF50 or SPF50+. (This means that it’s a high level of protection. More specifically, it means that it multiplies the time your skin is protected from UV rays by 30/50.) 

Choose one that says „broad spectrum“ or „UVA and UVB“. (This means that it protects you from different kinds of UV radiation. This is a very oversimplified explanation but you can say UVA rays are longer than UVB rays, so they harm different layers of your skin.)

Choose one that’s water-resistant. (This means it’ll keep up 50% of its protection even if you get wet or sweaty. Important: you still need to re-apply after swimming!). 

A quick note on chemical vs. mineral: they both achieve the same goal, they just do it in different ways. Chemical ones basically absorb the UV rays and turn them harmless, mineral ones physically block the UV rays from reaching your skin. Both have their pros and cons in usage (Mineral ones work immediately after application and are often more gentle to dry or sensitive skin but can leave a white cast and feel heavy on the skin. Chemical ones are lightweight and transparent on the skin but can need up to 20 minutes to work and can be irritating for some people with dry or sensitive skin). But they both work well to prevent skin cancer. It’s a question of personal preference. 

How to use sunscreen? First of all: It’s important to use enough. You need around seven teaspoons for your whole body. If only some body parts are exposed, a good guideline is: one tablespoon for your head and one tablespoon for each limb. 

It‘s also important to really cover all body parts (that aren’t covered by clothes). Don’t forget your ears, neck, scalp (if not covered by hat), hands, feet (if not fully covered by shoes) and lips (there are lip balms with SPF!). 

You need to re-apply (or head inside) after two hours. You also need to re-apply after swimming or heavy sweating (like after a workout). 

Try to store your sunscreen in a dark and cool place. Hot temperatures can make it expire more quickly. Check expiration dates of unused sunscreens before use. Replace opened sunscreens after twelve months. Old sunscreens can be less effective and some ingredients can turn harmful when expired. 

Remember that makeup products with SPF can only be an addition, not a replacement of actual sunscreen. You simply don’t use enough of them to work as sunscreen. Oftentimes, you’d need to use a ridiculous amount of product to even reach the promised protection. The only exception would be the mentioned lip balms (since most people wouldn’t put actual sunscreen on their lips). 

Last but not least: know that black people and other people of color need sunscreen, too! Your skin color doesn’t offer automatic protection. Or, well, it might offer up to SPF 13 - but as we have seen above, that’s not enough to protect you from skin cancer. Plus, if you have white doctors, it’s a sad reality that they may not be as trained in recognizing skin cancer on dark skin. Skin cancer tends to be diagnosed later in black people. Which is all the more reason to protect yourself! 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Dad 

P.S: and of course: don’t use tanning beds. They do not provide any health benefits and are not a safe alternative to natural sunlight. Instead, they’re heavily linked to skin cancer, especially in people younger than 35 years old. Even one single session can increase your risk. It’s just not worth it. 

[phant0mth1ef]

somewhere in germany, but i can’t place it.

-

“i hate this.” you’d said. the hot sun makinng your skin look like you’d just fallen from the sky, an angel in disguise.

he laughed. not a fake laugh that you let out when you want the conversation to end, but a genuine laugh that makes you want to get to know more about him.

more than you already had.

you’d only be here for the day, you decided this long ago.

your quirk wasn’t too special, you were able to teleport anywhere in the world, so long as you knew of the place. you didn’t need to know specifics like coordinates or geographical information.

but that’s what was so special about you.

his red eyes glowed in the sun, making you smile a bit once his gaze shifted from you onto some scenery.

he’d wanted to take the day trip to germany. it was something you’d both do every so often when he didn’t have to go into work. you’d pick a country, and go there. but you never took down city names just so that you’d never really know where you were. actually, it was mainly so you could both live in the moment.

that’s what he loved about you.

you refused to relive things, only focused on your future.

i guess this also led to his demise.

the man sat inside your formerly shared apartment, the remnants of you polluting the space as if you were screaming at him to not get rid of your things.

screaming. yes. there was a lot of that on that fateful day.

he chose to blur out the memory of you two fighting in your kitchen.

chose to blur out the minute you’d found his collar smudged with lipstick as you’d been doing laundry. chose to blur out your angry face, although somewhat sad face.

you’d left that night. he didn’t know where. maybe off to one of those tropical cities you’d visited, maybe one of the rural ones. maybe even a new one.

he wouldn’t know.

he’d frowned, staring at your closet with all your clothes. the silence enveloping him the same way it had all those years ago when you’d first gone.

so he sat and waited. just like he’d always done.

[vespidclan]

Today’s the anniversary of when I first started Vespidclan in Clangen… The day the game broke

I miss back when the girls were so young and happy… before we had any bug drama :’) They’ve gone so far!

I’d probably do a special event or something for this but I don’t really know what to do! So take these facts about what it was like playing the actual game from what we know thus far

Their names were all the same, except Snakepaw was Icepaw. I kept it for a while thinking “oh Icicle and her are matching” but it started to confuse me between the two! So I changed her to Snakepaw about 2 moons in, since she looks like a piebald snake to me.

^ Tying in with that their warrior names were completely the same and I didn’t have to change them… Except for Snake’s. I think she was Snakeeyes, which is a name I liked, but didn’t really fit all that much for her! I ended up naming her Snakevalley for no specific reason, it just sounds nice and cool. (Maybe for an in-lore reason, Icicle gave her ‘Valley’ to keep the remembrance of the Pineclan forests and fields with her)

All the Pineclan cats are in the file and are dead, Sparkbreak is the Starclan guide. I changed this later when I added in Moththorn/404 to the game, but I shouldn’t expand on this, because of lore reasons! Wait until I Am That I Am comes out!

Now that I think about it all lot of names were changed- Fallenfox was something else, but ‘fox’ was RIGHT THERE and I HAD to name her that. Warmfur was Warmshade (good name but he’s literally bright orange), Dreamcatcher was Dreamspike (wasn’t a fan of this one), and everyone else thus far have their names the way they are.

I know it doesn’t seem like it but this story will still keep The Swarm elements, it just wasn’t implemented all that well because there were so little cats! It’ll be added into the story the same time I started following it more in my gameplay, which will be somewhere around the current moons… because of someone we know. 👀🦋

I like having creative control over how the cats look when I draw them. The colors are fine and I try to keep them as close as possible without color picking (I’d hate to have cats that look the exact same) but I like to simplify my designs for them and so they look nice in a comic format, and only sometimes adding extra stuff on them- Icicle never had any yellowish white but she got it cuz I felt like she needed more color on her.

Heartflicker never got a permanent leg injury. I added that to the story myself because it worked as a ‘consequential’ event for what happened before. (nearly killing Icicle) It’s not something she can undo just like that, neither can she undo her actions.

Through my notes I somehow messed up with the seasons. Instead of having greenleaf for 3 moons, I wrote down 5 moons. But I kept this and will continue to! It adds so much to the game being broken and unfixable, not even the in-game moons are perfectly fixed because of 404’s influence.

^ This is also why I made Snakevalley die the way she did. No one gave her berries, no one killed her or anything like that. In the game she died of a heatstroke. But in the comic, it was leafbare, so this didn’t make any sense to me. Took me a while to come up with a reason to have her killed AND be a complete turning point for the story… Because her dying was a complete shock for myself!

…YES Icicle gets pregnant. But that was and will be the only heavy spoiler I am willing to share!

[herefortheships]

I have a long af post in my drafts, a rambling essay I haven't finished writing about Beetlebabes and purity culture now vs the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.

I also have another post where I'm putting together all the romance beats in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (following the Romancing the Beat romance structure beat sheet).

And finally I also have two more Beetlejuice posts I haven't finished, one about Betelgeuse's role in the first film vs the second, and one is just a response to another post I never finished typing because I started it days ago in the morning and I had to leave so I couldn't finish it, and then I lost my thread of thoughts, so maybe I won't finish that one. Maybe lol. It was an interesting post about Lydia I wanted to add my thoughts to.

[cosmocove]

time to make your choice only you can be the one

[qoldenskies]

Donnie for sure the second youngest but I don’t think he probably thinks of Leo as older practically. They’re probably only a few months apart at most and I don’t think Donnie would consider that developmentally significant enough to see Leo as a big brother like he does Raph. Leo on the other hand, absolutely views Donnie as a bratty little brother. Basically they’re not twins but still do the twin thing when someone asks who’s older.

Younger: we’re twins it doesn’t mat-

Older: me I’m older

its honestly why i usually like to make their twinship a compromise for donnie's sake. he doesn't really accept the idea of there being a power dynamic between them with their ages (even though there kind of is? raph and leo are in their own little camp separate from donnie and mikey, it's pretty clear by the way raph puts so much pressure on leo in particular) and i usually dont have him bring it up much it at all unless he's thinking more about mikey because i think them having solidarity over having to deal with their older brother bullshit is true and like. genuinely kind of canon? they're so fed up with them LOL

like ngl i actually care so much about second youngest donnie BECAUSE of his relationship with mikey. b team is my favorite thing in the world

(also yes absolutely no matter how small the gap is to me, leo will use EVERY opportunity to hold it over donnie's head. i mean i think episodes like lair games make that clear. when he grabbed donnie's vambrace and held it out of reach in smart lair too LMFAO... genuine bastard older brother behavior)

[liuisi]

anyone else completely disillusioned with buying new clothes

[sysig]

UI Special Feature! (Patreon)

[amelikos]

Spinel and Agate key frame.

[pumpkinrootbeer]

I hate the fixation part of anxiety disorders, especially when it is something that in no real world will ever materially affect me in any meaningful way bc what do you mean I have spent the better part of three hours so anxious im nauseous over a hockey player *potentially* not resigning with a team. I have real boy problems too and my brain chooses this to get so fixated on I'm almost crying over it. I WANT TO BE NORMAL!!!!

[goldensunset]

re: the music rant I tagged you in I am so sorry for tagging you in my double-dose caffeine fueled haterism explosion post. truly was off the shits and did not realize how much random garbage talking points I was ready to spill on the first person to ask

but i love haterism…..

[thrilling-oneway]

i don't remember if i ever shared my vbs one. wtv

[victory-cookies]

god I’m so torn. I have a few things I really buy rn but realistically I don’t think I can afford all of them. So I’m trying to weigh what I should let myself but bc I haven’t bought myself anything nice in a while

[lesbiansanemi]

WARNING FOR ANIMAL DEATH/MUTILATION IN THE TAGS

I think I’ve figured out why it’s the stuff with my cats that gets me the most viscerally upset when it comes to my roommate and I think I need to tell him why that is… we had a talk and he apologized for a lot of stuff but I just feel like I need to explain why I react so intensely to him hating my cats/wanting me to get rid of them

[welcometogrouchland]

Thought about Damian and Dick's dynamic for too long and now I need to level a city block

[rikusuriuri]

ik rusty and brock are very nonchalant about the clones 19 years down the line but i do think the first time they had to use them must have been awful, assuming jonas sr didn't have it perfected/completed for rusty . the clone slugs are one thing, but the computer housing their memories/selves (the computerized [souls]) is a whole different mess, plus it also just means watching your kids die (for the first time) . and it's not like competent clones are a thing you can test for. sure you can check that the slugs are functioning and healthy, but it's not like you can test your backup data is gonna work bc once you put that into a slug then it's not a clone slug anymore, now it's your son, and neither of you are gonna kill your son . one of you is supposed to keep those kids alive (well really both of you, but one of you is specifically hired for it) & one of you is such a failure in all things science, all you can do is hang on to your father's coattails and hope he keeps you afloat, but you call these slugs your life's work. and sure your dad was doing some clone research when he was alive, but these boys arent his, they're yours. And you dont want to be your father as a father you want to be your father as a scientist, and you make these clones because you're a father, not because you're a scientist . etc etc dont know where i was going w this . rips off my shirt to show off another shirt that says "ask me about my ideas on the vital relationships related to clone slug twin sons"