#I think this is what draws me in most about it on the level of execution

[aro-absol]

[ID: A digital comic with a simple drawing style. It consists of long text that is accompanied by small drawings, matching what is said in the text. The text reads as follows: "I've always been a big reader. I was treating earlier and faster than most of my peers my whole childhood. [Three books: one is titled "Magic treehouse" and has the caption "kindergarten", one is titled "Harry Potter" and has the caption "first grade" and the last one is titled "Percy Jackson" and has the caption "third grade".] and my tastes have alwaystended towards the magical. fairytales, myths, and fantasy have been longtime favourites as far back as I can remember.

As I got older, my tastes didn't change all that much. They did expand, to being ok with things like horror, violence (and mild gore), death... As children's tastes tend to do. But I still loved fantasy stories just as much. When I hit eighth grade, however, they noticed a bit of a problem. I was getting a bit old for a lot of the middle-grade fiction books I liked. I thought: "Okay, sure! I've read adult-level books with no problem before, I'll just head for the fantasy section!" I asked a couple of friends for book recommendations, and culture reading except… [A drawing of many different scraps from books, all clearly from romantic and/or steamy scenes] ... All of it was just so stuffed with sex and romance. [A drawing of a person shaking their heads in disbelief and saying "ew" while reading the book, with an arrow pointing to them saying, "14 and very aro/ace"]

Needless to say, I did not want to read those books (and haven't to this day.) Thought bubble of the person just described continuing: okay, this is probably just my friend's stuff. I know they like these kinds of things. I'll just look for myself! [A drawing of a person standing in front of a big bookshelf that is labeled "young adult and teen fantasy". There are many different phrases pointing to the box on the shelf. The phrases read: "sex scene on the first page", "sex", "twilight", "romance "' subplot'", viscerally upsetting description of making out", "fade to black sex scene", "no sex but only technically", "sexy elves", essentially a romance really", "insane amounts of kissing".]... you gotta be kidding.

Over the years since then, I've tried to find fantasy stories that I can actually enjoy. [A drawing of a list titled "typically good". The bullet point read: D and D based (sex jokes but party focused), comics, fanfic, older media (pre-90s), MG fiction (last resort)] I've had some success at finding patterns that work for me, but a lot of these categories are very digital. (At least for me.) And because of that, all the time I once spent reading is now on my phone.

I don't really know where this is going, or what the solution is. Most people do like sex and romance, and reading about them. And this is just a thing for making a terrible comic day. I think it's pretty common for aro and/or ace people to feel left out, since so often these are treated as universal ideals. But to anyone feeling that way: I promise you are not alone. Also, allos: get better writing material, seriously. And better friends, since yours are apparently so terrible you can't write deeply meaningful relationships without kissing. (Half joking.) / End ID]

Note: this image description is not fully complete, as I left out some smaller drawings that I couldn't add into the text in a way that makes sense and weren't crucial for understanding. Also, I apologize if this description isn't clear to people who use screen readers but I do not know how to make it any better. If you have any suggestions, tell me please.

My (late) contribution for Make A Terrible Comic Day! I've been going to the library more often lately so this has been coming up a lot, cause I want something to read but have had trouble finding anything that I'm comfortable with.

If anyone has recommendations please please let me know because I am struggling.

[scribefindegil]

Lorraine Baines McFly and Female Autonomy

Hello. I have spent the past month slowly losing my mind about Lorraine Baines McFly, Marty's mom in Back to the Future, so I am finally trying to articulate some of the reasons I'm so feral about her.

There's a quote from Lea Thompson, the actress who played Lorraine, that goes, "The three parts that women usually get to play are virgins, whores, and mothers, and in Back to the Future Part II, I got to play all three." While this is commentary on Hollywood and the limited roles that fictional women get forced into, I think it's also interesting to think about it in terms of how these roles are reflected onto actual women and used to limit their personhood and confine them to a very narrow range of acceptable behaviors . . . and then in turn to think about how the character interacts with these roles on a Watsonian level. They're affecting not just Lorraine the character as she was written, but Lorraine from an in-universe perspective trying to navigate life as a woman in a patriarchal world. Some of the sexism she faces is a deliberate narrative choice and some of it is a result of the writers' blind spots, but for the purpose of this essay I'm less interested in teasing out which threads are which and more in looking at it holistically.

Because the thing about Lorraine is that she's aware of what the acceptable roles and behaviors for women are, and the versions that we see of her across the various timelines alternately fight against and capitulate to these constraints. What is a woman allowed to be? How much is Lorraine willing to break from those restrictions? How much does she allow other women to break from them? Does she resent her role or embrace it? I have a lot of thoughts specifically about how the different iterations of her interact with concepts of female agency and autonomy.

(Putting this under a cut because it is. Long.)

I started thinking about this when I was talking with my partner about 50's Lorraine. She's extremely active and driven and planning to Get What She Wants (in a way that is very scary, if you are Marty) . . . but at the same time she's clearly aware that she isn't supposed to be. A Good Fifties Girl is demure and passive. Lorraine isn't--but she's still trying to toe the line. I think constantly about the scene where she shows up at Doc's garage to be like "I followed you home . . . so that I can ask you to ask me to the dance." The girl can embrace borderline stalking but she draws the line at directly asking a boy out! She's exercising a lot of agency but views doing so as rebellious and subversive--and risky.

And I also want to talk about the whole "boy crazy" thing because like . . . society (especially in the fifties) tells women that the most important thing they can possibly do is find a good man and become wives and mothers, that this will define the success or failure of their entire lives (and given how many things were unavailable to single women at the time this is in many ways true) . . . and then relentlessly mocks and punishes anyone who actually takes an interest in pursuing this instead of just sitting back passively and waiting. She is trying to do what society says will make her happy! And even her desire for a white knight is very much based in the reality of her situation! She's getting sexually harassed at school and around town and she's doing exactly what she's supposed to and standing up for herself and saying no and fighting back--and this is not enough. She does need backup! Biff harasses her in the middle of a crowded cafeteria and Marty is the ONLY person who does anything! No fucking wonder she latches onto him as hard as she does! (There's. I promise this is related but there's a BttF parody musical on YouTube where when Strickland comes to break up the lunchroom fight he says, "Now, I can excuse sexual harassment, but LIGHT SHOVING?" and like it's a haha funny joke but also?? Yeah?? That IS how it works. The way Lorraine's being treated is so overlooked and normalized that the authority figure isn't going to step up the way he will when it's a physical altercation between two guys. Screams.) I wonder if part of the reason she stuck with George in the original timeline even though they didn't have a lot in common is that "I have a boyfriend" is a boundary that some people might actually take seriously whereas "I'm not interested" is not.

But. In general 50's Lorraine is very much about grabbing as much agency as she feels she's allowed to . . . and then Twin Pines Lorraine is what happens when she regrets the result of those choices (because while we don't see it, it's pretty obvious that in the original timeline she pursued George as aggressively as she pursues Marty in the new one), and so she decides to deny, not just her own agency, but female agency as a general concept. She leans so heavily on the idea that her relationship was "meant to be" because it absolves her of any culpability in creating a life she's unhappy with. She's rewritten her own past to view herself as a passive participant in something inevitable. (Exactly the view of womanhood that she was fighting so hard against in the 50's!) And she extends this idea of female passivity to the women around her: telling Linda that she should sit back and wait and a relationship will "just happen," actively resenting Jennifer for doing something as simple as calling Marty on the phone. It's a really interesting form of internalized misogyny, perpetuating these sexist ideas as almost a misguided form of self-defense.

And then for Lone Pine Lorraine this is completely flipped! She loves Jennifer for the same reason she disliked her in Twin Pines: because she reminds Lorraine of her younger self. And like . . . this is something of an extrapolation, but while obviously her husband and kids are still very important to her, it also feels like she has interests and friends and other things going on in her life, whereas part of the isolation of Twin Pines is that her life has shrunk down to the point where she's ONLY a wife and mother with nothing else to define herself by. And it also matters that in this timeline she has a partner that supports her, not just in the big dramatic moments (although also that), but you can easily see the dance as a catalyst for George actually learning to listen to her and stand up for her about smaller things as well. George McFly feminism arc. (I'm being slightly facetious but like. George starts off kind of shitty. The spying is actively Bad and I hope Marty chewed him out for it offscreen, but also his reaction to the harassment scene being "I think there's someone else she'd rather go with," implying that he sees what Biff is doing as like. Normal flirting that he expects to work. He doesn't GET it. Unsurprising because he is. A teenage boy in the fifties. But I do believe that saving Lorraine was something of a wakeup call and after that he listened to her about things that make her uncomfortable and gave her the support that she needed. Which would also give her a lot more freedom in this timeline because she has someone with more societal power who has her back!)

And then. Hell Valley.

If Lone Pine is the version of Lorraine who has the most freedom, the most opportunities to make decisions based on what she wants instead of What Is Expected Of A Woman, Hell Valley is the opposite. The things denying her agency in Twin Pines is largely societal forces (and herself); in Hell Valley she is actively being denied autonomy by her evil husband who functions as the personification of a bunch of sexist ideas.

She's been objectified to the point that she doesn't maintain control over her own body; Biff pressures her to get cosmetic surgeries so she can continue to look attractive to him because that's the only value he sees in her. Her physical appearance is entirely tailored to his preferences.

Biff's view of Lorraine is wife-as-possession. He treats her like a prize he's won and her kids like parasites. And he is NOT subtle about this. But Lorraine is still desperately clinging to the idea that she's wife-as-family. She calls Biff "your father" to Marty when he arrives, and talks about "our children" because she wants so so badly for this to be something different than what it is. It's especially terrible because this is a timeline where she got seventeen years of being happy with George, she knows what she's missing, and she keeps trying to force this new relationship into a similar mold even though Biff is openly contemptuous of her and especially her kids. It's been twelve years and she's still trying to pretend. To call back to that Lea Thompson quote: it's obvious where Biff thinks Lorraine fits on the virgin-mother-whore axis, while Lorraine is actively trying to centralize her motherhood partially because the kids really are that important to her and partially as a defense mechanism.

(And it's also such a bleak cautionary tale about how fragile women's stability can be when they're dependent on their husbands; Lorraine was happy with George and had a fair amount of freedom, but he was the only one with an income so when he died she was suddenly forced into a truly horrific situation because she had no other means to support herself and her three young children. Especially given that the Hell Valley universe is also worse in some broader political ways that mean there were probably even fewer social supports available than in real life 1973)

And god. It kills me the way that we see her lash out, the way she's clawing for autonomy when she threatens to leave . . . and then exactly how Biff levels all his axes of control against her. It's very interesting that his first tactic is consumerist (Who will pay for all your things? Who will take care of you?) and that doesn't work even though not being able to support herself is a very real concern. It's only when he threatens her kids that she folds. And then she immediately crumples and pivots to rationalizing Biff's behavior and blaming herself for her own abuse (in a way that is both HEARTBREAKING and also? surprisingly sympathetic and realistic for an 80's movie?). It's similar to the passivity we see in Twin Pines, but here we see exactly where it comes from. She doesn't have any way out so she has to pretend. It's the only way she can keep going. She has these flashes of rage but they're immediately snuffed out by despair and denial.

There's not a lot of talk about Lorraine and what there is tends to reduce her to "well she's Marty's mom" as if she's a boring character who doesn't have a lot going on. But even though most of her role in the movies has to do with her relationships with the various men in her life, those relationships are really interesting if you actually pay attention to them! She's not just (in the 80's) a wife and mother--she's someone who has a complex relationship with marriage and motherhood and the societal expectations surrounding them. She's not just (in the 50's) a vapid boy-crazy girl--she's doing her best to go after what she wants in a world that doesn't want her to (the fact that one of the things she wants turns out to be her time-traveling son from the future is unfortunate but not something she has any way of knowing!). She's stuck in a society that doesn't want women to be people, and she knows this, and because we see her across two different time periods and three different timelines you can watch how sometimes society grinds her down until she gives in and tries not to be a person. And also how, sometimes, she fights back.

[secretlyobito]

Second skin

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Who knew the fearsome Uchiha Sasuke was........clingy?

Post war Sasuke x reader

Lots of things had changed about Sasuke since the war ended. He had a rinnegan now in his left eye, he was much taller, calmer and....touchy?

It freaked you out the first time it happened because before his defection and the war, you were used to zero physical affection from Sasuke. Sure there was the occasional hand holding or forehead tap but hugging? Caressing? Cuddling? Sasuke was uncomfortable with that, with letting people in that close. It wasn't a big deal to you, you knew your lover and accepted him for who was, quirks and boundaries included.

So it came as a shock to you when he showed up at your doorstep a few days after the war had ended and he had been pardoned for his crimes against Konoha. Sasuke never came to you first, it was always you putting in most of the heavy load in the relationship. You were already poised to ask him if everything was alright when he suddenly pulled you into a hug. What the hell, who's this and what did he do with Sasuke?

It startled you, you almost didn't recognize it was a hug. It was obvious he didn't give many hugs, he was stiff, akward and wasn't even fully touching you. After a few moments of you standing there and blinking in shock, he eventually grunts and shoves you away (lightly) in embarrassment from your lack of reciprocation. His cheeks are red as he huffs and turns around ready to leave. He summoned up all that courage to finally hold you and this is what he gets?

"wait! wait!" you giggle gripping his cloak to prevent him from leaving as he grumbles and tries to hide his flushed face. "Was that a hug??" you howl with laughter as he yanks his cloak out of your grasp and glares at you. "I was just...nevermind" He figures explaining would make everything worse. He was just going to leave and pretend this never happened, and if you tried to bring it up? He would just gaslight you into thinking you were crazy. Yep, sounds like the perfect plan.

You decide you've laughed at him enough, after all he's making an effort. You smile up at him before gently grabbing his hand and tugging him closer. "Thank you Sasuke, that meant a lot to me" You hope your words of praise would encourage him to take more baby steps. "But I didn't even do it right..." He huffs looking away, yet his thumb draws circles on your hand that grabbed his. "Its the thought that counts anyways" you shrug.

Sasuke always loved that aspect of you even though it felt like he was taking advantage of you. You were always so kind and caring and so understanding as a partner, even when he failed to be affectionate like other guys were to their girlfriends. Well no more, all that was going to change starting from today.

Ever since that day, true to his words he was more affectionate. He was basically attached to you by the hip now. He had gotten better at hugs too, they went from stiff and weird to warm and loving. He was also much bolder, these days you would find Sasuke absent mindedly caressing your thigh or sweeping you off your feet(quite literally) when he felt you were walking too slow, his new favourite hobby was lounging with his head in your lap and you playing with his hair. He would never admit that though.

He hadn't quite gotten to the level of cuddles and kisses yet. Whenever you brought it up while suggestively wiggling your eyebrows, he would blush and stutter calling you a little pervert before abruptly walking away to go and fantasize about how it would feel to have your lips on his.

Even though it seemed like Sasuke being clingy and affectionate was something he picked up out of the blue after the war, the truth was that Sasuke had always been an affectionate person by heart. Only his parents and Itachi knew just what a loving and tender boy he was. Much to his delight, Itachi was often the subject of Sasuke's cuddles when they were younger but the sheer gravity of the trauma of what he had been through made him into the damaged and withdrawn person he became before the war. Now he's slowly healing and learning to love again and you couldn't be more glad he chose you to take on that journey with him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Guess who's back from the dead? meee. Jk I've actually been busy with uni applications, your girl's getting ready to move halfway across the world for school, pray for me ya'll 😭😭😭 also if anybody knows any good scholarships for international students aside from the mainstream ones like commonwealth, chevening, mastercard etc, please recommend them to me ☹.

Thank you for reading, hugs and kisses. 😙

[vladdyissues]

so i keep thinking about just how thoroughly knocking vlad up would fix a lot of his issues (or it does in the series as my ass would write it). i also keep thinking the timing is SO bad on giving him any in the canon

SO

TIME TRAVEL

-Danny (late teens) is given a chance to change the past

-he decides to go and antagonize Vlad a few years before canon to distract him from murder attempts on Jack. draw his wrath onto himself and displace his previous rage target. that's a nice safe range of time travel right? how badly could he possibly throw things off when he already exists and is most of the way to who he was when he was starting out?

-small side effect--he catches Vlad's full attention. he hadn't planned to go after Jack and Maddie for a few years yet, when everything was lined up, meaning Danny is the ONLY one he has eyes for right now. it's a level of intensity he was not ready for

-Vlad, meanwhile, is unprepared for how he feels to see another half-ghost. he had been ready to go those whole 20 years totally alone, preparing for that perfect moment of sweeping Maddie off her feet. now it's a little difficult to focus on the big picture. he needs to figure out EVERYTHING about this stranger

-over a course of about three months, shit gets romantic. and physical. not necessarily in that order

-Danny realizes he's THOROUGHLY fucked the timeline as WELL as his archnemesis, so actually tells Vlad the whole story--he can't stay in the past forever, but his memories of being here and doing this will sort of... snap into place when this timeline's danny reaches the right age. Here's events between then and now, here's things he would like to still happen, here's things he never wants to happen

-he does NOT expect Vlad to wait and they're still in that spicy in-between part of enemies-to-lovers so Vlad sure as fuck isn't promising that, but he's certain he isn't obsessing on taking Maddie from Jack anymore, so looks forward to the option of picking up where they left off

-(dick so good it can fix homicidal rage)

-Danny goes back to the new future at the end of those three months since much longer and he'd start forgetting relevant details in living a day to day life and ohhhhh fuck, fuck, FUCK WHAT DID HE DO

-meanwhile in the past Bitter Reunions happens and Vlad has no desire to do anything to Jack or Maddie besides introduce them to his adorable tiny four, soon to be five year old daughter Danielle, with whom he plans to move to Amity Park soon when she starts kindergarten. openly offers to train Danny with no strings attached, he's just invested in making sure he survives for at least a few more years

-(jailbait wait, but make it sci-fi)

-Vlad is much more chill about things with an attainable goal and a small child that needs him at his best

-he doesn't see his Danny in this newbie, but now he knows the future, knows that if he's just patient and helps Danny out now, HIS Danny will come back to him

-when the timelines eventually sync, THERE'S THAT FULL, INTENSE, ATTENTION AGAIN

-as well as several years of memories of becoming intensely attached to Dani and Vlad being an infuriating jackass without being an antagonizing one, keeping some of that hateful spice without actively committing crimes against everything Danny values. in fact, his help was still instrumental in pulling things off

-Vlad has been waiting for this Danny for some time now, full-on obsession building up steam, so if Danny wants it to not happen, he had better say something about it

-he does not. he kinda dreaded losing it on snapping forward, actually. and Vlad managed to thread the needle of training him and building a bond with Dani without totally shifting their relationship's tone

Time Travel makes me cry because my stupid ogre brain is not good at parsing temporal phenomena but the parts I understood were excellent and make perfect sense. And the thought of Jack and Maddie being surprised (and maybe relieved, because 20 years without a peep from Vlad and suddenly a party invite? Kinda unnerving. Is he still mad?) to find their old college friend is a happy single father to an adorable little girl who—wow, Jack, doesn't she look so much like Danny when he was that age?—is just 💯💯💯

And Vlad knowing that there's something wonderful (a relationship, family, love, connection and understanding like he's never felt before) waiting for him at the end of this journey if he can just be patient would, I think, do a lot to tone down his villainous proclivities.

Vlad's essential problem is that he's so desperately lonely and impatient that he can't see beyond his immediate need to satisfy himself. He can formulate elaborate plans, yes, but he doesn't really plan for the future beyond those plans. He's totally still living in the past (at least until this AU happens), metaphorically driving a car with the pedal to the metal but looking nowhere except the rear view mirror. And this AU totally breaks that and gets him looking ahead, invested in the present again. I love it.

[starry-bi-sky]

yall ever think Shen Yuan went through like, internet withdrawal after being transmigrated into Shen Qingqiu? Like, he's canonically a NEET shut-in who did nothing but spend his time online, you can't tell me that for the first week or first few weeks of being SQQ he wasn't twitchy.

Like, reaching instinctively to his pockets for a phone that wasn't there, having an obsessive itch in the back of his mind that he should check and see if X or Y novel or webcomic has updated -- only to realize he can't anymore and being irritated by it. Wanting to go and see if there's new posts about this or that, but again realizing that he can't.

When he's bored or uncomfortable or just feels like wanting to escape he tries to go for his phone to distract himself, but oops! Not there anymore, and now he has to find a new and different way to distract himself from his feelings. And going through system notifications, quests, etc only does so much.

And there's that Tetris Effect too. SQQ makes a mistake while writing and instinctively goes to backspace on it except hey-ho that's not a keyboard and now he just dipped his pinkie into a bottle of ink or on a still-drying letter.

With him scrambling to fix his reputation and learn how to be a peak lord, I think his abrupt cold-turkey from all things internet would just be another straw on the camel's back that he promptly Ignores until it goes away on its own after he acclimates to his new surroundings.

[lightbulb-warning]

i used to freehand comics all the time as a child and since the part i liked was the drawing part i would just draw panel after panel because i didn't want to stop drawing to think about icky icky words, plus the story TOTALLY still made perfect sense! to me! and noone else, but 'whoooo caaaaares omgggg its not like comics and sequantial art are a communicative meeediummmm lmaoooooo'. i spent my entire childhood telling myself stuff like "oh pfft I know this story by heart- ill SIMPLY remember the dialogue and write it later" ...and. I can't help but admire baby maiora's (call that a minora ba tm tsk) fucking audacity? hubris? confident wrongness? kid couldn't even remember to finish the comics in the first place? INCREDIBLE levels of unearned self assurance, wish that were me, genuinely- what an icon!!! anyway i think i have forever cursed myself

[daily-whistlepaw]

daily whistlebreeze until spo becomes PoV day 1398

I like seeing how different I can make gray cats by throwing Whis at them; anyways, Spotfur's been on my mind tonight

[lunasilvis]

Joined the UX Reddit community and already engaged in discussions about conversation rate formulas and quarrels about off-putting weird as shit details in Spotify's interface + shadows on buttons lol.

I've officially gone so nerdy :-) this is 30 so far

[nevarroes]

Ive never interracted with your art more than just liking it on twitter (may have left like 2 comments b4 I don remember) but I enjoy Cassim and the lore you have created for them + Gortash! Getting to learn more about the lore behind ur artworks has been enlightening.

You have previously inspired me to create lore for my own baldurs g8 character that feels just as satisfying as your own realizations about Cas :)

If I ever play baldurs g8 again it will be very weird to talk to Gort bc I will misremember that he is not typically surrounded by a giant gray demon that makes fun of him for being fat

p.s. from a fellow artist, don't forget to create art for your own self-expression- regardless of it's "social media worthiness"! All art you bring into existence is as important & worthy as your own existence (which is very)!

thank you so so much man, I'm glad you enjoy them💜 It means a lot to me that ur interacting after following for a while too tbh, like obviously blah blah dont post for interaction nd stuff like that but it still means a lot to me to hear people enjoy them nd my art aside from just leaving a like, if that makes sense🤲

[turnedpalefromlackofsun]

Much emotion

[rolandkaros]

no, you are right! karo for any slam in her long career. WTA BEIJING TITLE COMING SOON!!

i fear she will get her ass handed to her in the semis but i do like your attitude anon

[moe-broey]

I CANNOT BE DOING THIS. THIS IS NOT WHAT I INTENDED TO DO. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[theultimatekamehamehavoc]

so i maaaaaay have fallen deep into spirk suddenly 👉👈 without warning i don't even know how i got here sent help

[smalltimidbean]

oh to have a fiend plush… i mean i can technically get one made by budsies (a plush making company) but you’re probably not comfortable with that. which is perfectly valid

i must confess i never thought i would admire them so much as i do lol (even if they slightly scare me /lh)

ah well i’ll continue to admire them from afar

Yeah, not only would I be very uncomfortable with that, it'd be incredibly disrespectful (and just plain weird) to take my personal character (or anyone's, really) and make a plush of them to keep for yourself - so, please do not do that

If I did theoretically have a project featuring Bean and Fiend, and it was popular enough for merch, Fiend plush would definitely be one of the first things to make, much to their chagrin hehe

Again, unlikely to happen, but thanks for liking Fiend so much!

(Also tangent, but if I had a nickel for every time someone really liked a more antagonistic spin-off of Bean, I would have at least two nickels, which is not a lot, but it is weird that it has happened at least twice… (reference))

[ichorblossoms]

having thoughts about grimm's relationship with their body and humanity and how it probably transitions more post-story bc it's not until somewhere in p3 that it feels actually, fully comfortable in its own skin for all its inhumanity, and i think that's enough for it to unlock new gender thoughts

this got long so i'm putting it under the cut. i'm just rambling abt character shit over the timeline of the story and whatnot yeehaw

overall, grimm's not someone who hates their body and all the ways it's not human, especially not to the point of harming themself about it or being overly reckless (their sense of survival and self-preservation are Very strong), and at no point in the story do they really hate their body or anything, but they struggle to see it as a human body. before i get too into how the story affects things; they exist in a body that was modified at a decently young age, they've grown up in this body and know how it moves and reacts, but as they distance themself from their past, they realize that a lot of what felt like decisions they chose to make, including modification, were actually the result of manipulation and abuse, so their body carries a lot of...reminders that fade in time but never truly disappear. and they got out of that! they survived and won't go back! but because of all of this shit (< grimm backstory post) it left them not only with an emotional gap between them and most people, but a physical one too, and that's even harder to form relationships with people without hiding because opinions on humods among the non-modified majority usually falls somewhere between "patronizing pity" and "violent disgust" (then you occasionally get the outliers like yarrow who are fascinated by it, or the folks who choose modification out of excitement and not desperation, but again, outliers).

which, grimm doesn't consciously carry any of the "ohh they're going to think i'm a disgusting abomination of a creature" sort of angst that i often loathe in fiction, but instead has this perpetual sense of "i'm comfortable in my own skin, but i need to hide what i am for my own safety because i am not human" which isn't entirely untrue, but it keeps them from sitting down and thinking about like. what they want. or analyzing their personhood and how that's affected my being humod. in a way i think gender stuff comes easier bc grimm is so comfortable letting other people just assume whatever of them bc they're more concerned with "passing" as human and therefore whatever other ppl percieve grimm as gender-wise has no bearing on their own sense of gender (if that makes sense)

of course the actual thing is they have a metric fuckton of internalized shame around being humod they don't/can't look in the eye, but there's no way in hell grimm would have the self awareness or emotional intelligence for that. at least not at this point

and one of the many things that grimm runs away from at the end of p1 is yarrow's curiosity about their inhuman body, because why the fuck would it confront the reason why someone showing interest in them for what they are causes them immense discomfort? that's enough vulnerability for the next five years, thank you very much.

for all they run away from everything there, a lot of emotions still linger and that empowers grimm to at least sit down and think about what it would like its body to be like and change it accordingly, which is great! transitioning and exhibiting control over their own body is what grimm needs! it doesn't solve everything bc they're still paranoid as all hell about having their modifications seen by anyone, but damn, having tits sure ain't bad.

then everything with grimm coming back in p2 happens and here yarrow is, enthusiastically loving it and its body for all it is (after the whole. yknow "hey that the fuck is going on between us what is your goal here asshole"), so a pocket of the world where it doesn't have to worry about constantly wearing like five facades opens up and it's comfortable for the time being and some of that stuff can start to be slowly unpacked, which is well and good, but grimm still is distinctly aware of how it feels different from yarrow because it's humod and they're human and that's not really as big a deal as grimm is thinking but. yknow. the hypervigilance

and then of p3 happens and yarrow becomes humod and of course the shame in letting that happen is there and it's overwhelming and it's crushing and grimm thinks they can never do enough to apologize for dooming yarrow to the same existence it has but worse bc he can't hide like they can but then yarrow...just... isn't doomed by it. he revels in his new and weird body like the weird doctor he is despite the horror of it happening in the first place! he can't hide it like grimm could before (grimm stopped caring about hiding bc it's not like yarrow could. plus pretending to be fully human is negligible when you're like. hunting people down and causing extreme property damage), but that doesn't change that he can clack his mandibles like tongs or has a secondary pair of arms or a fucked up proboscis tongue to [redacted], which is fucking cool! how could grimm ever be disgusted by yarrow's body when the not-quite-man they went through hell to find and still love so much loves it! yarrow's still a person! maybe not fully human anymore, but what does that matter!

and there's way too much other shit going on in p3 for them to parse everything out but loving yarrow and his humod body gradually allows grimm to circle around and reconsider their own body and relationship with it for themself and eventually question what about hiding/ambiguity they liked so much and if it's still "useful" or should they make some more assertions about who and what they are. also how the shame of not being "human" they carried for so long doesn't actually matter and is not exclusive to personhood unlike their teen years suggested and also maybe yarrow calling them his "wife" set off something too idk

after that it's even more vague soup than the actual canon of the story bc i'd like to. y'know. write the story itself first before thinking about what happens after everything but it's good to have a trajectory. or something idk

[the-yearning-astronaut]

Anyone else find themselves dismissing their current elevated pain levels purely because they remember what it felt like to have even worse pain and because it's not THAT high it's not actually THAT bad?

Like. Using my pain chart I know I'm bouncing between a 7 and an 8 today. But because I remember how bad it feels to be at a 9 or 10, my brain keeps telling me to suck it up and that I'm over exaggerating or whatever.