#I probably needed this
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This is partially an agreement, but also an extension, with my own story:
I managed to repress my nature for 37 years, partially because there were a few outlets for that energy. I hit my low when my marriage fell apart (not really a surprise, now that we each know what we were going through) and I nearly acted to stop there. Ultimately, I realized this would leave my daughter seeing that neither parent had chosen to stay with her and I wasn't having any of that, but in that decision, I never actually decided to live.
I went most of a decade in this state, basically trying to die without technically doing it, very Intentionally making choices that lead me into ever growing states of risk and legitimately daydreaming about ways to handle dangerous situations that would risk everything in a reasonable way, while making sure my kid had whatever she needed. It isn't like I never seemed to have fun, after all I wouldn't have been a good parent that way, I just made sure that I had good life insurance and correctly selected beneficiaries at all times, while slowly destroying my body.
Thanks to COVID, I wound up at home all of the time. My hair grew long and I got a thrill and the feeling of it brushing across my back, or the weight of it in the shower. My nails got longer and I decided to shape them, instead of trimming them. I had always enjoyed stopping to look at gorgeous or cute dresses, but I suddenly was struck by a sadness, knowing that the way I had treated my body, I'd never be able to wear the ones I loved... Not that I wanted to, or anything, you understand, I'm just starting to work out and eat better so that I could, okay?
It was around this stage of denial and discovery that r/egg_irl content started to hit the front page, because of a few particularly good memes, I loved them and interacted a bit, so the algorithm decided to keep sprinkling them into my feed. When they scrolled by, I would giggle and upvote and feel happy for a few moments.
Eventually, I subscribed and spent more and more time reading those, r/traaa, r/mtf, etc. and one day, I just couldn't resist responding to a comment that resonated with me. Before I knew it I was talking about my trans experience and joking and picking a name.
It was three days later that the understanding sunk from my surface thoughts and actually hit home. I had been reading on what it is to be transgender and everything kept hitting home, hard, but what finally broke down that wall was reading about internalized transphobia. Every line was familiar. Each effect was my experience. Finally, I broke down and cried wailing about how I didn't want to be trans (who wants to be hated and hunted), but once I was done, I finally felt better.
From that day forward, it has been like a future actually exists. There is a life that I actually want to live out there and I am heading toward it, in spite of the fear my society imposes on me. I actually want to live to see it!
In my case, the knowledge that transition exists did save my life and does so in a continuing manner. Not only am I finally truly alive, but I'm no longer carefully trying to accidentally die.
But, the habits aren't gone. I still barely live, much of the time, I still fear troubling others, I still fail to reach out. I still cut myself off and try to disappear into the background.
I literally discussed keeping in touch with a lovely freshly omnigendered person that I met because we got along so well and you know what: neither of us has reached out. I fear that xir likely also thinking of what a bother they must be and how she can't initiate, in case the other is just being nice. I know that's what I'm thinking.
I am getting a little better at accepting that I'm allowed to want things for myself and every now and then I convince myself that I can "waste" the money on me. It is usually clothes that manage this, unsurprisingly, but everything else tends to just fill my bookmarks.
But, I have yet to accept the idea that I deserve to exist. I'm something wrong, something unwelcome, something unlovable. It isn't that any of this is true, logically, it is that I believe it at such a deep level that my logic can't touch it. I struggle to accept an invitation to help or to shared time, because I'm clearly just a burden to the person who offered it. I wouldn't want to trouble them by taking their outstretched hand,,,
so many of the transfems i know spent their time pre-transition performing a kind of lifelong exercise in self-deprivation. the goal, for them, was to find out exactly how little a person needed to live. they starved themselves, dressed carelessly, shunned friends, and hollowed themselves out so as not to be burdens on anyone but themselves.
i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.
i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.
and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.
so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-deprivation that so many of us learned to rely on.
and if you are so lucky as to love a trans girl, you must insist upon her. you must insist upon her happiness, her comfort, her pleasure, and her rest, because she may still not yet know how to make those demands for herself. if you can devote any amount of energy to becoming an engine that nurtures the flame of even a single tgirl then there is a place for you in trans heaven, which as far as i'm concerned is the only one worth going to
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i always think abt my cousin in greece who's like obsessed with american culture, bc ill say that im going to a barbecue and she'll be like "wow.... a real life american barbecue... will there be red cups?" you bet your ass there'll be red cups. take my hand. have a hot dog. all your dreams can come true here at the real life american barbecue
#she needs to visit so i can take her to a mall#the food court alone will blow her mind#shes like 14 so claire's and/or justice would probably also blow her mind
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I keep seeing the leather/pleather vs denim jacket poll over and over again with all different sorts of discourse about how there is no plastic-free pleather and like, that's TRUE, there isn't, but honestly I DO think people who don't want to use animal products* also deserve to look cool
and so my suggestion is that y'all google "waxed cotton jacket" or "waxed canvas jacket" plus like, "motorcycle" or whatever style you think is cool, because there's a plastic free leather-look material that is strong and durable and waterproof and doesn't use animal products** AND is plastic free already out there and some of the clothes that you can get made out of it look sick as hell.
*ignoring the fact that most leather is meat by-product that would be going to waste anyway
**except beeswax but if you're going to object to that then honestly there's no helping you
#leather jacket#denim jacket#I have a waxed cotton jacket that is one of the coolest jackets that I own that sadly is a bit too small for me now#and then I have another one that is technically an oil skin#which is a style of coat in Australia#probably most famous by the brand Drizabone#but yeah you literally don't need pleather even if you're vegan#just melt some wax into a tight-weave cotton jacket and it will look and wear like leather
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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.
#listen to old auntie Shades#serious#fuck I don't know how to tag this#I should probably read-more this but I'm not sure where#and now I need to go take a walk for my stupid mental health#you never stop processing#you do it over and over and over and over#and hope it gets a bit easier each time#Someone might get upset by using prey#but 'preferred prey' is an important concept from the predator's view#it doesn't mean the people are inherently prey#you feel me?#it's the best word I can find for the concept#neil gaiman#adjacent
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ngl for lot of my life i thought parents sitting their kids down and telling them how babies are made was just a thing they made up for comedies on tv so now im curious how common it actually is.
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Simone de Beauvoir, from Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 1, 1926-27
Text ID: I observe how much I have matured since last year despite my belief that I was losing myself, how something strong was born from the painful experiences survived and from the numerous minutes that I believed were wasted.
#simone de beauvoir#diary of a philosophy student: volume 1 1926-27#diary of a philosophy student: volume 1#diary of a philosophy student#quote#diary#journal#nonfiction#nonfiction literature#french literature#lit#miscellanea#🤍🤍🤍#i need to clear out of my drafts over the last year—i’ll probably be mass-posting over the course of weeks. :(
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Put salt in your baked goods. Put salt in your desserts. Just do it. Please. Salt isn't just for savory, it's literally a flavor enhancer so even a pinch can take a meh recipe to one people can't stop eating. Listen to me. Your cookies and cheesecake bars are bland and uninteresting. I'm taking your hand. I'm guiding you with a gentle touch to the back. We can do this together. Trust me.
#baking#just do it just put THE SALT IN THE COOKIE DOUGH#you need some salt i promise#just a little#just skooch#'the recipe doesnt call for salt' THEN ITS PROBABLY WRONG
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post-graduation trip airport looks
#my art#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#jjk fanart#yuji itadori#megumi fushiguro#fushiguro megumi#nobara kugisaki#itafushikugi#jjk spoilers#jjk manga spoilers#jujutsu kaisen fanart#these took ages but fr once i am choosing to forgive myself given th fact tht i was coming out of A State when i drew them#im normal now dw drawing the first years wearing merch of my comfort content fixed me#when in doubt play dress up. life hack#i am holding fast 2 my hc tht megumi is a fiend @ indie platformers and is a household name on the celeste speedrun leaderboards#argue with a wall this is my jujutsu kaisen#megumi designated Drink Runner also#alr in line at a cafe texts their gc 'what do you guys want' n gets mad @ nobara fr making him go to a Second shop 2 get her bubble tea#anyway theres not much 2 say abt these just bc i needed sth Light n Easy 2 get me out of my head#no lore to fashion pieces which is both a blessing and a curse but it Is what i needed#nobara serving looks fr a flight i love u so much. it's probably 8 in the morning n she is in a fully coordinated fit#its so criminal tht we don't have more alt hairstyle official art fr her???? iirc it's Just the lost in paradise mv with her in buns no????#robbed. i am fixing it immediately.#wonder where the 3 of them wld go on a trip
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First meeting
#stobotnik#doctor ivo robotnik#agent stone#sonic movie universe#i hope you all are noticing what i'm doing with stone's clothes specifically#white shirt pre robotnik black to fit his goth boss then colors when ivo starts wearing red#also i know we all like to think robotnik hated being assigned an agent but i present to you:#he sees it as a symbol of status kinda. stone hates being here#it just feels right to me. it's not that robotnik thinks the agent will be useful at all#he's just pleased that he got one#everyone else has an assistant why shouldn't he?#this ties to a very very stupid headcanon i have#and it's that robotnik's blood type is O negative#HEAR ME OUT he would hate that. he would hate being an universal donnor because he doesn't care about saving lives of humans ew#but then stone is also O negative so that means robotnik can receive blood from him if necessary#and that's mostly the reason why he was chosen to be his assistant#ivo is too important to die! and O negative blood isn't that common#Stone knows but probably no one told robotnik#then of course imagine stone getting injured and needing blood and ivo is like wait i can do that it doesn't matter what his blood type is#you get the point#i think. i'm pretty sure there was a point#oh well#oh the no hr joke. they're a shady goverment organization i don't think they treat their people that well#that being said maybe robotnik's treatment of stone was the reason they had to get an hr department who knows
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your design of me
#marcia#digital art#illustration#original art#yay its doneeee#oh garret#im sorry its always the same#its always about being a means to an end#and its doesnt matter if its a cold and calculating eye or a warm naive vision#they dont want you for you. they only want what you can do for them#and feeling needed and irreplaceable stopped feeling nice 3 lifetimes ago#all that is left are frustration and anger#dont you get it? dont you get it? the contours of what makes me me are not in the shape of your needs and wants#orion lavont#rosie lavont#garret#tcm#the clockmaster#oc#MARCIA CONTINUING HER MISSION TO SHIT COLOUR MAXIMALIST STYLE!#you know when youre trying something for the first time and youre like uh oh im having a feeling im not excellent at it from the get go#looowkey how im feeling#as you know ive been trying to incorporate more colours into my works#but i am yet to truly understand what im doing#i dont want to stumble into results with adjustment layers anymore#i wish to do things on purpose#I want to be in control! I want to make conscious choices!!!#anyway the purpose of these was to do something new and quirky#something other than faithful rendering#the most challenging part of this pic was probably all the papers. adjusting the perspective and all
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10/10 parenting from the Aftons in FNAF
#myart#chloesimagination#comic#fnaf#five nights at freddy's#michael afton#william afton#mrs afton#fnaf 4#afton family#you guys don’t understand#like how many people asked for this comic to happen#like I got multiple comments saying I needed to draw this next#ITS SO FUNNY like okay guess I should do it#this comic is unserious but I can’t prove it’s uncanon#probably the most normal family conversation between the Aftons
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Company Mandated Fancy Fits on the Tulpar 😏
Also had to include the REAL star of the show (and a bonus)


Based off of this and this. Thank you very much joetastic for being inspirational 👍
The REAL reason this is late

#just pretend I posted this like 6 days ago 😁👍#<-got distracted#sorry I’m Afflicted with The Curse and everything just takes me a long time#also right now I’m just kind of being experimental with my workflow and style right now so stuff is just naturally taking a bit longer#mouthwashing#mouthwashing fanart#anya mouthwashing#mouthwashing anya#nurse anya#curly mouthwashing#captain curly#mouthwashing curly#swansea mouthwashing#daisuke mouthwashing#jimmy mouthwashing#myart#anyway my new years resolution is to put more WOMEN in SUITS and MEN in DRESSES#had fun drawing this but still not too sure about the rendering style just yet. probably just gonna keep playing around with shit#IM DOING IT SCARED but im DOING IT#im also still trying to figure out how to Social Media#am i doing it right#GRAAAHHHHHHH I NEED TO BETTER UNDERSTAND FORMATTING POSTS#i have a more serious mouthwashing piece in the works but wanted to get this done first lol#honestly I have a buncha sketches I should post too#i like them but they’re not really composited very well if you catch my drift. been having trouble with sketch page layout recently#which is kind of antithetical to the idea of a sketch page but you know how it is with spaghetti#i doodled the others on the side and liked how they looked so i just put some color and basic shading on them#edit: realized i forgot to change the color of the ‘lapel’ on jims shirt lol
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Percy “Has Been Waiting to Use This Meme as an Excuse” Jackson, and Annabeth “Never Seen a Meme” Chase
#this has probably been done before but#i enjoyed making this silly thing this morning#also is annabeth aware of memes in the show???? annabeth how will you bond with Percy#he definitely has a hyper detailed Minecraft world#anyway#pjo series#pjo tv show#percy jackson#percy jackon and the olympians#annabeth chase#fanart#pjo comic#my art#I’ve been really enjoying the show!! i need to reread there’s so much I’ve forgotten
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*proceeds to drink the whole bottle*
Yeah Alastor you're gonna be loved and appreciated wether you want it or not :)
#hazbin hotel#hazbin hotel fanart#hazbin alastor#hazbin rosie#radiorose#platonic radiorose#qpr radiorose#even tho they have no idea what label to put on their relationship at this point#hazbin comic#comic#my art#autodesk sketchbook#it probably looks ooc from alastor to react like this but poor man has only learned his whole life that relationships have a hierarchy#“marriage > a simple friendship” in his brain and it's confusing for him that Rosie would put her friendship with him over that#also Rosie was pissed of how terrible her date went and as soon as she comes home Alastor sides with her ex husband#just to explain why she got angry so quickly basically they couldnt really understand each other that's why they got angry#I love cute fluffy radiorose but its good to see them argue sometimes eheh#I needed to get this idea out of my system and made it into a whole comic
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oversaturate
#my art#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#jjk fanart#jujutsu kaisen fanart#yuji itadori#itadori yuuji#jjk yuuji#been trying some stuff out in an attempt to beat the artblock out of myself with hammers#and i LOVE how it looks but god it takes so long painting like this#i had a ref style i was going for that was a lot more washed out and watercoloury#and to be fair my take on it did start out looking more adjacent to that#u can still kinda see remnants of the initial watercolour washes in the collar of yuuji's jacket in th bottom one#but it Did Not Last fhdjfjjg what can i say im a gouache/oils gal#i can't use soft greys and watery inks i need stark blacks i need the reddest red the colour wheel will provide#one thing i did keep from the refs were the sharp prickly fine lines i think those look real cool against textured colour blocks#anyway ive also been having a lot of fun playing with rly rly harsh lighting on the hair#and even thinner linework put down after the colour as opposed to before#probably one of the reasons why it takes a lot longer but also it mimics traditional art a lot more#ill probably continue playing around with this sort of render ! or at least keep elements of it
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YAAAAY U REPLIED TO MY ASK! 1!!! 1! 1! 1!! (also can we have some more shadow hating Robotnik for existing and loving stone for... Also existing)

They're all adapting
#ask ask ask#stobotnik#agent stone#doctor ivo robotnik#shadow the hedgehog#shadow doesn't understand the dynamic but he will protect stone#stone just thinks the doctor is acting a bit weird but hey at least he's not dead#robotnik is trying to... be a good boss-friend? honestly he doesn't know#he just wishes shadow would leave#also i headcanon that ivo built Stone's motorbike#was probably the first thing he actually created once he recovered from the events of the second movie#and he added a bunch of stuff stone never uses and a lot of safety things#(he just came out of multiple surgeries stone you don't need to go through that too)#but anyway it's a very cool bike so in this particular au i think stone would he like#hey doctor maybe you can do one for shadow too!#and ivo goes haha. never. NEVER.
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