#It's self inking do you--

[inkskinned]

even 2 years ago people still said autism with a whisper. it was also how people sometimes whisper lesbian, like they're afraid of uttering a slur. autistic was either an insult or it was something terrible, a horrible burden only select people endure. "select people" were usually 9 year old boys and skinny white men.

they are not hispanic young adults with a dog and a life and friends. i can make (sustained, calculated, painful) eye contact. with certain people, i don't even have to count how many seconds i am holding their vision - i can just look at them. i can wear clothes that bother me, i will just have a worse day than usual. i might cry about any changes to my schedule - but change is scary! this is normal!

when i was 16 it was OCD. i mean that was the thing everyone said. i totally have ocd. they would arrange 6 colors of gel pen in rainbow order (no worry for indigo feeling left out) and they'd be "so ocd" about it.

if you struggle with intrusive thoughts, be careful at this next paragraph, but. at 16 i developed a compulsion that involved self-harm. my ocd was convinced i was simply forgetting that i'd hurt someone terribly - a thought that persisted for no clear or delineated reason.

at some point i will probably write about how the idea of "morally pure thoughts" was hell for me and others with ocd, but this was the odd dichotomy for many of us: they liked our "aesthetic", but were genuinely repulsed by our lived experience. "intrusive thoughts" now means "cutting your hair in the sink" instead of talking yourself down from believing horrible things. "so ocd" is a label without any true understanding.

it's something i've talked about before - in multiplicity - but i firmly believe in the veracity and necessity of self-diagnosis. i think it saves lives and it saves tragedies from occurring. as someone raised in a house that wasn't safe, self-diagnosis was, for many years, the only viable option. 15 and honestly googling: am i depressed or are there demons affecting my behavior.

but it is not genuine self-diagnosis anymore, most of the time. it is a strange, blanched version of that whispered word autism. now certain traits are constantly seen as "autistic" - any passing intense interest. any flubbed social interaction. people say it while laughing - a touch of the 'tism.

and i like the acceptance! i do. i like that people are talking about it. i like that if i self-identify, more people speak up and say me too, bitch. but there is something-else quietly happening, the way it happened to OCD. the quirky, "fun" parts have been washed and sanitized and removed of all suffering. now it is just something that makes you "a little bit silly."

it took me 27 years on this planet before i learned to make friends. something about me just seems incredibly odd, i guess, some kind of radiation monitoring. someone once (in a way that was almost friendly) told me i am doing the right things, but in a way that's off-putting. i have scoured myself raw attempting to be charming.

someone on tiktok does a deep dive into their particular passion. the top comment says "what kind of autism is this lol". like we are a breed of animal. like it has no influence on our experience. like our life is a fresh breeze, an open meadow.

more often for me, life was a drowning.

[thebookquotes]

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose."

Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

[arylleth]

A friend once told me that the secret to finding love was not to actually look for it, but to heal the things that were preventing you from seeing and receiving it. I think the biggest one of all is, “What will having this love fix?” What will having this person next to me make me feel better about? What do I need them to tell me? What do I need them to prove? Who do I need them to look great in front of? What purpose do they serve for my ego?

[yeehawpim]

wwwo oc painting the sword of the citadel!

The Wizard Smile

paints propaganda murals and portraits by day and creates children's books by night

wrote and cast a spell that erased all visual representation of themselves in retaliation to pictures of themselves existing without consent

the public facing reason to the spell being cast is that they would rather the heroes of the empire they paint to be remembered rather than their own face

[kabirsehgalart]

Do you know what love is?

[yungluv16]

let yourself be loved again.

[summerlimeismethebrony]

[Image Description: an 11-panel comic page on paper in which Laurice Deauxnim/Larry Butz and Maya Fey from Ace Attorney sit side-by-side. Laurice has tight posture and an uncomfortable look on his face, while Maya is looking around in an uninterested manner; a large textbox labeled "Waiting for Nick" points at the two of them. Laurice looks over at Maya with a sidelong glance, grimacing. Laurice turns away, asking: "...Do you hate me?" Maya bursts out: "WHAT? Why would I hate you?!" ["What" is in all caps to indicate volume.] Laurice flinches away from the outburst. Laurice begins to explain, saying: "Elise", but cutting himself off and shaking his head, starting again with a downcast expression: "Your mom was my mentor." ["Your mom" is underlined to indicate emphasis.] Maya leans forward on her hands and tilts her head in confusion. Laurice continues, waving his hand in the air: "Like, she taught me how to be a better person, to— to grow up, y'know?" Laurice looks back at Maya, his palm toward her, with tears in his eyes, and says: "But you... She was your mom, and you never got that." ["mom" is underlined to indicate emphasis.] Maya looks at Laurice with concern, as he says: "I wouldn't blame you, if you hated me." End Image Description]

I think they should be allowed a Real Conversation, actually

(And some close-ups, bc I forgot just how energy-intensive making a comic page is, and I ended up working really hard on this messy, self-indulgent little comic)

[mellblogss]

How do I know if he really cares about me?

[creatingnikki]

I am lonely. An honest thought on a mundane Wednesday after dinner.

I miss him. Now that we are being honest, might as well admit the feeling that has been blooming and withering throughout my body since the last few evenings.

I will live a better life. A promise to be kept to myself, it's only the third of January; it's not time to forget our loyalties to ourself.

[revasserium]

write. it doesn't have to be good, it doesn't even have to be a story. write a sentence, a fragment, a phrase, a thought. write something. write anything. write.

and be proud of yourself that you did.

[madmonologues]

You are her mother. Why did you not warn her, hold her like a rotting boat and tell her that men will not love her if she is covered in continents, if her teeth are small colonies, if her stomach is an island if her thighs are borders? What man wants to lie down and watch the world burn in his bedroom? Your daughter’s face is a small riot,

[pastelaspirations]

Does ink has disorder of any kind?

I assume this is related to Ink in Perseverance lol. Okay, s o. I tend to write Ink with some tendencies that I have because it's easier to write more realistic depictions of things if I draw from my own life as inspiration lmao. As such, the only thing I am confident saying he has is social anxiety, as that is the only thing that I'm officially diagnosed with.

That said, I've seen people comment that he displays depressive tendencies, as well as having vivid flashbacks and tends to dissociate as what is sometimes typical of PTSD. Since I mostly write these things based off of personal experience, I am hesitant to say he has these things lol, especially since "mental health testing" doesn't exist in my world as much.

Does that mean he doesn't have them?? E e e e h h. Let's just say the only thing I am 100% sure in saying he has is social anxiety✧˖°.

[madness-of-void]

Chapter 2 is here!!! Enjoy!

NEW TAGS ADDED: Self-Loathing, Crepic mention, inner conflict, Anxiety Attacks

[authenticity2025]

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

[starmonsterrr]

day 1: warmup

Yesterday i had to do an event for a roblox game (creeturs of sonarfreakingnaiararia, S stands for "super grindy") but I'M GONNA CATCH UP

I was originally gonna do something different for the warmup but i got this hilarious idea

[darewolfcreates]

run Run RUN

*lays on my stomach and kicks my feet* CMYK mono printing is fun :]

Bit of an explanation here- we had a printing assignment to put a twist on a fairy tale. I picked that one fairy tale where some guy proposes to some woman but then the woman gets turned into a bore and is killed by her betrothed and the cook finds her ring in the bore's stomach and proposes to his own love with it. IDK what it was called and I cant find it again but it may have been an Irish or a Norse folk tale- I remember having my mother read it to me in highschool when me and my sibling somehow managed to convince her to start reading us bedtime stories again. If anyone knows what I'm talking about please tell me its name. I cant find it in any of my books or online.

so the twist-

I had this one dream around the time of highschoolish that had some parallel themes that poped up in the story of the bore. So ill tell that dream to you now.

There was a realm that lived alongside our world. Like how some worlds live in our shadows, this one lived in our light. I could enter by stepping forward into the sun with my eyes closed. And when I was a child I was discovered by an organization in this realm. I was thought to be human but when I was stressed I would start to change, these changes allowed me to fly. It was discovered that I was a creature from a whole other dimension. A “Survivor”, if a Survivor’s life was threatened they would gain more and more traits that would allow them to survive even the worst apocalypse. If a survivor was pregnant while in their full survivor form for longer than a certain period of time, the baby instead of developing, would be sent to another dimension and go into the womb of something that could carry them. The child would develop with the characteristics of the species carrying them. The one who discovered me worked as an investigator for a crimes division and I had fun helping him solve his cases due to my ability to essentially: not die. Unfortunately due to my proximity with crime I was discovered by an individual who took advantage of the fact that I was not from this dimension. While there were many creatures from other dimensions I was the only Survivor that had ever existed in this one or was known by anyone who had ever lived in this dimension. Because of this there were no laws on my species about slavery or ownership. The individual in the dream ran a freak show circus of sorts and bound my soul to them so that they owned me. I didn't like that so I just left the realm, ran away and never went back. Years later I was an adult and I ended up being selected as the “average joe” in a princess-off composition in the realm of light. They wanted one randomly selected individual to take part so there could be a comparison to judge the princesses off of. It was a bit stressful since I didn't know what was happening most of the time but there was a race at one point and I realized I could just fly, there were no rules saying I couldn’t, so I ended up winning that part. At the end of the day I was going to go home but my brother wanted to come see me when I told him about the composition and he got lost in the train system. I ended up spending a lot of time out in the open tracking him down and at one point when combing through train cars I passed by the man who owned my soul. I ended up finding my brother and I took him home immediately, but the damage was done. The man followed me and the rest of the long dream consisted of me running, and running, and running, and slowly losing myself as I changed more and more. I couldn't stop. Everytime I did he would catch me and with every time it was harder to escape. So I had to just keep running. My eyes went black and my nails turned into dark claws. The dark black fur crawled up my arms and over my body. My eyes turned to bright purple and my hands turned into knifed hooves, my teeth turned into long needles, I grew a long tail, and my vision went black. I could no longer see normally but instead I could see souls. An adaptation that allowed me to avoid all forms of sentient life and I ran on and on and on. I had no more thought about my life that I had lived, I had no more thoughts about rest, or my family, or anything other than my need to RUN.

So basically the parallels were the transformation and the being hunted. But also I'm loosely twisting the "belonging" to someone being the hunter as well. I mashed these two stories together to make something new. The prints mostly just retold the dream but instead of the continual running I was subjected to the story ends like the one with the bore, an arrow delivering a final blow. The golden ring in the bore's belly became the shinning light where the arrow struck in the last piece.