#Please explain yourself if you do

[stil-lindigo]

lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)

if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.

--

no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.

I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.

I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.

If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.

[mossy-aro]

ultimately i think my insistence on aro positivity honestly is as much a political stance as a personal one.

when i say aro positivity is crucial and that i dislike doomer-ist posts that express sentiments like 'I hate being aro so much I wish I was dead instead’ it's not because I don’t think there can and should be a space for negativity and acknowledging self-hate, or the many ways being aromantic can really suck sometimes. i find that to be very important!

that being said. there is smth here about how self-hate posts are sometimes just arophobia that we inflict on ourselves. and when we put that out into the ether it (intentionally or not) can become arophobia that we inflict on other members of the community. i think there absolutely needs to be a place for negativity and the expression of anger and frustration and self loathing even - these are all good things to talk about because these are things that we experience. that being said, it can also be genuinely upsetting and triggering to people to have what is essentially arophobia shown to them and then have that be validated by other aspec people. your personal thoughts can affect your wider community on a level you may not anticipate. and i understand it i truly do! it took me so long to be able to recover from accepting being aroace - it threw my entire world off kilter and made me question everything about my place in the world.

but my insistence on aro joy and positivity is because ultimately i do believe that building is at the core essence of it all. that ultimately discussions and the purpose of community should be about construction, not destruction. and this is both a personal and a political stance. talking about how much you hate yourself and cultivating online discussions/spaces where negativity about aspec identity is the main and only theme is destructive - if that’s where we let the conversation end. these thoughts can and should be used as a vehicle to look for a path forward!

joy and positivity create a space where the focus can become on forging a path forward, on construction, on community building instead of tearing ourselves and others down with negative thoughts. it’s not productive or healthy when it stops at a place of negativity - it becomes actively destructive to the essence of community.

and i do think that this is especially poignant considering the fact that being any kind of queer, but especially aromantic (and/or asexual) means forging a path for yourself and making your own happiness where there is no obvious way forward. our communities exist mostly online (right now, anyway), there is little recognition of our existence in the real world, the effects of amatonormativity are both pervasive and actively dehumanising, and there are legal, economic and social structures in place actively making our lives more difficult. yes that all sucks! it’s good to acknowledge that. we need to in order to change it. but more importantly, that’s not the end. we are still here and our happiness, our future is for us to determine. even if we can’t change the laws or society, loving yourself and understanding aromanticism as a political identity (as well as personal), as a radical worldview, and as a protest against amatonormativity is essential for both community and personal well being. the personal is political.

tldr. i guess my point is that as a community, we should focus on building, improving, and nurturing ourselves and each other (construction) as opposed to destruction. we should recognise aromanticism and asexuality as political identities as well as personal ones and rely on community and self-love in the absence of anything else as a form of protest and political power. destruction (the recognition of everything that is wrong) is essential as a starting point - but where do we go from there? we rebuild.

[millerflintstone]

Small rant

A boundary isn't something you expect someone to do or not do based on how whatever it is they're doing affects you. A boundary is something you'll do/not do based on how someone behaves. You don't even have to tell people about it specifically. That is a silent boundary.

For example, "if you call me during work hours and it's not urgent I will hang up on you and not talk to you until I'm done with work."

If the person continues to call you for non important crap while you're working just hang up on them or mute your phone/avoid the call. That's you enforcing your own boundary.

If you know the person will argue about how correct or not this is, you don't even have to tell them about the boundary or that you're going to enforce it.

You don't even have to pick up the phone. and if you feel obligated to, that's another layer of stuff I'm not addressing here.

You can't control other people's behavior. You can only control your own response to other people's behavior.

[mushroominaforest]

My heart is broken I will never recover/j

I had a very strong vibe that ppl were gonna dislike Wenda 😭 Most of my rambling were bc I was hoping people wouldn’t hate how I did her character lol

Anyways I’m gonna ramble more bc I desperately need people to like or at least understand my ideas lmfao

My au obviously isn’t going to be as gruesome or dark as canon, but Wenda is still going to hurt people. If I was just making a chill high school situation then yeah I’d probably change her vibe. But I need someone sorta evil for this!

I couldn’t really think of a different way to make someone who’d be willing to do bad things to people for petty or shallow reasons without making her a “outcast with low empathy cause mental illness” character, which I didn’t want to do for obvious reasons.

So instead I went for the mean girl stereotype. A rude, rich, bully who thinks she’s better than everyone else. That’s the most reasonable character to make evil in my opinion, because I know people like that and they can be downright horrendous to the people they target.

If I do continue with this au publicly (I already have a lot of ideas and writing and stuff for it but it might just be for me cause I’m a coward lmao) then it’ll probably make more sense.

[prosebushpatch]

Okay so I recently, finally, watched Wish and I have some thoughts. Overall, not as bad as everyone makes it out to be, but still has a lot of fundamental story problems and I've got to get them off of my chest. I'll mostly be focused on Magnifico because I think his motivations and arc largely represent the problem with the overall theme.

Okay so my biggest problem with Magnifico is his motivation. His tragic backstory. How on earth does he go from losing his whole family to thinking, the only way he can prevent that from happening again is to grant wishes? The logic doesn't track. It almost makes sense in his creating a kingdom where he protects everyone and "doesn't even charge rent," but it does not make sense with his wish granting. Having a great need to be control to make sure he doesn't lose anyone ever again can be a compelling motivation for a villain, where we see lines crossed that don't justify the intent, but in the movie, he's too self-absorbed to seem to have any actual care for the people of Rosas.

I think if the motivation was changed to something like Magnifico had once been a bright-eyed, enthusiastic wish granter who blindly believed all wishes were good but learned the hard way that that wasn't true could have been a better fit for the overall goal of the movie. Imagine that he granted a wish for a wicked person who used that wish to hurt others, or if Magnifico granted a wish but that wish ended up ruining the person's life because what they wanted wasn't what they needed (i.e. Remember The Princess and the Frog? Dig a little deeper) and that person could have went after Magnifico and blamed him for their troubles (harkening back to We Don't Talk about Bruno). This would be an understandable tragic backstory for Magnifico, and better explain why he's so careful about the wishes he grants. And, perhaps the reason he keeps the wishes he doesn't want to grant is to keep the people in his kingdom docile. No one will be angry with him for not granting their wishes if he makes them forget them and lose that drive and motivation, which makes more sense than the unexplained hording them like he does in the movie? Why does he keep them in the movie other than admiring the wishes? It doesn't make sense to me.

This would give Asha more of a reason to oppose him, if it's shown how his desire to not get hurt or to inadvertently cause hurt turned into a paranoia where he drains people of wishes to fly or play music that inspires others. And, as a side note, we need to see more of how Rosas is a kingdom of people who lack drive and motivation, where only those younger than 18 have that special part of them that inspires them to chase after a dream (something that Astor Rhymemaster touched on). Because that's the point of wishes, right? That's the point of the entire Disney canon. A dream is a wish your heart makes. That star can only get you so far, it takes hard work and determination. It's wanting something better in life, it's dreaming of leaving behind all you know to chase after a tangible light. It's finding a new dream, it's finding a new wish as you grow and learn about yourself and the world.

I don't think the movie Wish understood what makes wishes so important in Disney stories. You know what wishes do? They ignite change. It's not about getting what you want, it's about finding the courage to chase after something better. Ariel wants to be where the people are, but really she wants to be somewhere where others are willing to understand her and in the end, she finds that and makes amends with her father, who finally is willing to see her for who she is. Rapunzel wants to see the lights, and that desire pushes her to leave a tower she's been trapped in her whole life, learning that the world is not as cruel and cold as her abusive mother told her. Cinderella wants to go to the ball, to dance with people who treat her as a person and not a servant of cinders and ash. That wish is granted by a fairy godmother and gives her a hope that is worth fighting for, a hope that helps her reclaim what is rightfully hers; a glass slipper that fits only her and the love that comes with it.

Wishes inspire change. The movie should have been about that. Magnifico could have been right, that some wishes inspire negative change that can drag down multiple people. The kingdom of Rosas could have been so placid because change is scary. Maybe Magnifico could have convinced people, after taking their wish, that it wasn't worth it. Maybe the wish ceremonies could have changed so it wasn't portrayed as some sort of lottery everyone looks forward to, but Magnifico would grant wishes on the spot if he decided they were good and worthwhile, and he would lock away the wishes that would cause trouble and tribulations. 18 year olds could be enthusiastic to give him their wishes, thinking they were surely good and worth granting, only to forget their wish and be told that their wish would have only brought about their unhappiness, this would have justified a more solemn tone in the kingdom, setting up a world where people are mostly downtrodden, thinking their wishes are bad and pointless and they're better off without them. Imagine Cinderella or Rapunzel being told their wishes weren't good, reinforcing all the things their abusive families tell them, taking away that hope and courage to find something better for themselves.

Here's where the true conflict could come in. Asha could be onto this from the beginning, and her opening song could have been about this concern that the people who didn't get their wishes granted aren't willing to try at all. (Because, after all, why doesn't Sabino play music at all? Having that taken from him would take so much joy and creative expression from his life!) But why does Asha know something is amiss?

Simon.

Imagine that Magnifico has a strict rule not to ever share your wish with another person because then it wouldn't come true. It makes sense with our own superstitions, and then makes it so that no one knows anyone else's wishes. Maybe your best friend changes so drastically after giving up their wish, but you believe, like everyone else, that their wish would have only caused suffering. What can you do about it? Well what if Simon told Asha about his wish? What if Asha knew his wish wasn't dangerous and couldn't imagine a way that it could go wrong? That would give her a reason to doubt Magnifico and put more emphasis on how Simon has lost his drive like all the other adults in the kingdom. And it can also emphasize in the end that sharing your wishes and dreams with others can be a powerful thing. Just the act of sharing your dreams can inspire others to go after their own, and they can give you the encouragement to chase your wish too. Wishes inspire change, love gives you the courage to make it happen.

Imagine if the star boy used to be a human, who wished to help others and lost his humanity to do it. Imagine his wish confirms Magnifico's belief, that wishes cause suffering because star boy lost his tether to earth and is separated from the people he loves. Imagine how he foils Asha who also wants to grant everyone's wishes. Imagine him ensuring she doesn't make the same mistake he did while she gives him a reason to change again, to anchor himself to humanity again because he loves her enough not to leave for forever.

Imagine the movie confirming that, yes, change is scary. Chasing your dreams won't always make things better. You might fail more than you succeed and some wishes cannot coincide with each other, leading to grief and strife. But some wishes are worth it. Sometimes, chasing after something better and failing is worth leaving a worse situation. Sometimes taking that chance is worth it, and, like in all fairy tales, if you are kind and generous and act with love, that will make all the difference in the end.

Also, I know everyone wished for a Magnifico and Amaya evil power couple, but imagine if Magnifico was truly in love with Amaya, as he is in the movie, but that love is eventually his undoing. Like Amaya leaps in front of Asha, and Magnifico stops or redirects his attack because she's the one thing he loves more than himself and that is the weakness that Asha and co can take advantage of. Imagine Amaya keeping Magnifico in the mirror and he gets to dote on her from his imprisonment for forever. I'm just saying. At least 30 sickos like me would be into that. Imagine the depth it would give to the themes of love and change and wishing and how acts of love make all the difference.

Alright, I'll get off my soap box. I just really wish Wish could have been stronger because these fairy tales Disney is famous for matter. They really do. But the movie feels too stale and shallow and too much of a cash grab that knows the outline of a disney musical, but is unable to understand the heart of why they work.

[sinni-ok-sessi]

Would love to hear any thoughts on the codification of the poet-persona over time? 👀

Ok so in the spirit of the ask game, I am not checking any citations on this whatsoever, but if you want those lmk (though they uh. largely do not exist for rímur-poets specifically, because only me and Hans Kuhn have ever cared).

This is going to require some context because, as established, the number of living people who know and care about medieval rímur can be counted on my two hands. Probably without thumbs. So, rímur are a poetic form that developed in 14th cen Iceland, which look kind of ballad-y, in that they often use four-line stanzas with ABAB end-rhyme, though actually the ballad tradition in Iceland is quite distinct (on which, see Vésteinn Ólason, The Ballads of Iceland). End-rhyme was very exciting for Icelandic poets because it was only previously a thing in some uncommon types of skaldic metres, but rímur (as their name suggests) have end-rhyme as a defining feature and rapidly become The dominant form of poetry in Iceland until well into the 19th cen.

There are two very distinctive things about rímur, other than their metres: 1) they almost never tell 'new' stories; almost all rímur narratives are attested earlier in other forms, usually in prose, which can sometimes lead to the fun cycle of saga -> rímur cycle -> old saga is lost, new version is written based on the rímur -> more rímur are written based on the new saga -> repeat until the heat death of the universe; 2) as the form develops, it acquires introductory stanzas known as mansöngvar, a term which elsewhere usually means 'love poetry', although that's not really what they're doing here.

Mansöngvar are verses, sometimes in a different metre to the rest of the canto they're attached to, in which the poet speaks directly to the audience. In the medieval period, they're pretty short and often don't say more than 'look, I made you some poetry', but as time goes on, they get more and more elaborate, and the character of the poet begins to develop some quite distinctive traits. What's interesting here is that rímur were (certainly in the medieval period; less certainly later on) performed aloud, presumably by the poet, so there's definitely some questions to be asked about how accurate the poets' self-descriptions are when presumably the audience could go 'you're not pining away for love, Jón Jónsson, I've met your wife!'

So anyway, these mansöngvar are often linked to the medieval German Minnesänger tradition (er. The actual German word might be slightly different because I still don't speak German despite my PhD supervisor's pointed remarks), which is more overtly love poetry and which sometimes features the poet as an abject and despised lover of some cruel lady. This is something rímur-poets from the later medieval period and onwards have an incredibly good time with. You may be familiar with the story of Þórr wrestling with Elli, the personification of old age in the form of an old woman. There are at least two medieval rímur poets who have a whole extended passage about 'oh alas, when I was young I was a terrible flirt but now I'm old and no women like me, except oh no, I am being courted by this ugly old giant lady; Elli is the only ladyfriend for me now, wah'. it's very playful, it's very fun, it's drawing on this general sense that the poets put forward that they're poetically gifted, but romantically unlucky, which is kind of a Thing for poets across a lot of European literature (and probably more broadly, but I don't know much about that), and is especially pronounced in the earlier Icelandic sagas about poets, which usually feature poets failing to win the love of their life for various reasons (sudden attack of Christianity; sudden attack of magic seals; sudden attack of Other Guy With Sword; etc). So in evoking this, rímur-poets are situating themselves in this existing Image of the Ideal Poet, but doing so in a way that ties them into the specifics of the Norse literary/mythological tradition as well. Poets are also frequently old and tired (same, bro), and a statistically improbably number of them are also blind (although that might just be two guys we know about who were really prolific; most rímur are anonymous so it's hard to say. But it is perhaps convenient that this also links them to A Great Poet of Old, namely Homer).

The other thing that rímur-poets really like to bring up in their mansöngvar is the myth of the mead of poetry, which I will not recount here except to say that Óðinn nicked it from a giant, and also that some dwarves used it to buy safe passage off a skerry once, so it's poetically termed 'ship of the dwarves' because it's the thing that brought them safely across the sea. Every single medieval mansöngur, if one exists at all, refers to this myth in some way, even if it's just by having the 'I made you some poetry' bit use a kenning for 'poetry' that references the myth.* And poets have a lot of fun with this too! Iceland's a coastal community, they know about boats, so you get these extended metaphors about poets trying to board a boat to sample the mead of poetry and finding only the dregs because other, better poets got there first. Or they will describe the process of poetic composition in terms of ship-building: 'Here I nail together Suðri's [a dwarf name] boat'; 'Norðri's ship sets out from the harbour [= I'm about to start reciting the main bit now]'; 'the fine vessel has now been wrecked on the rocks [=I'm going to stop reciting now]'. They'll also speak of poetry as smíð, which means a work of craftsmanship, usually physical craftsmanship (obviously cognate with smithing in English), and of brewing the ale of Óðinn, so they're really into metaphors of physical craft when it comes to the intellectual craft of poetry, which I think is really neat.

*kennings = poetic circumlocutions, e.g. 'snake of the belt' is a sword because swords are vaguely snake-shaped and hang from a belt. Common poetry kennings are '[drink/liquid/ale/wine/mead] of [any of Óðinn's literally dozens of names]' e.g. 'Berlingr's wine', and the aforementioned 'ship of the dwarves' - poetic Icelandic has literally dozens of words for different kinds of ships and also literally dozens of dwarf names, so you can get a long way without repeating yourself.

So all these things that I've mentioned that poets like to bring up - old age, unluckiness in love, poets as craftsmen - become more and more tropified as time goes on, which in turn leads to these imaginative and extended reworkings of the metaphor. No longer can you just say 'I'm old and no one fancies me', no, it's 'My only assignations now are with Elli, wink wink, here's a long description of our date'. So you end up with this very codified image of The Ideal Rímur-Poet as an old man,* ideally blind, ideally unmarried, incredibly self-deprecating about his poetry, and because that's how everyone else talks, it's self-reinforcing.

*there is one (1) known female rímur-poet from the medieval period, the poet of Landrés rímur, who unfortunately didn't write many mansöngur stanzas but is doing her best with the 'unlucky in love' bit, although her lover (male) seems to have died rather than ditched her, which is a novelty.

Anyway, it's cool and weird and fun and as I say, only me and Hans Kuhn care, academically speaking.

[spearxwind]

sea of thieves rly was like. we are delaying the tenth season soo much its gonna be soooo good you guys <33 and dropping hints for more hunters call content and then the reveal drops and its just guilds. in the year of our lord 2023 (and one more mid world event i guess. coming a month after that but initially planned to be the one thing in season 11. and also the singleplayer mode coming in on december so two months into the "season")

[snekatiemainy]

'disability fakers dni' ok bye

[emblazons]

I am .001 seconds from going off on someone in a reblog

[fivewholeminutes]

I am unsure why he has a crowbar but, he is offering, if you need it

How did he know i need it for my totally legal and not at all evil plans 🤔

[jewish-jonathansims]

Autism is so funny because I can take one line and become obsessed with it's implications so now I am obsessed with the character as a teenager even though we are never showed that character as a teenager and my brain never leaves them and how the fuck do you explain it to people because it's one fucking line

Yes this post is about Aaron Hotchner

[triptychofvoids]

i know you say youre not a rp acc and not kin, but i wanted to ask, your art of medic, are you depicting yourself? should i refer to medic in your art as you? example "i love how you drew yourself in this"? idkk i dont wanna poke around but i wanted to be sure im referring to you correctly??

this is a good question, just one that im not sure i will ever be able to give a satisfying answer to. i did answer something similar here that im definitely not an rp account but im neutral on kinning, because the term seems so broad that i cant say for certain if thats whats going on. maybe! or maybe not! hmm and then my art of medic.. yes it is depicting myself. but i also recognize that medic is a fictional character, so it doesnt bother me if people refer to medic as medic! im just drawing him, it doesnt have to be more complicated than that. if that makes sense. its all one in the same to me so it doesnt matter and you dont have to worry about it :]€

[starving-mimi]

now draw the shadows kissing

i call this piece sex

[bowandbrush]

if you wear shoes in the house

EXPLAIN. EXPLAIN TO MY FOREIGN FACE WHY YOU WEAR YOUR FILTHY DIRTY PREPPY LITTLE VANS ON THE CARPET I JUST WASHED

[feline-evil]

"Ugh why do furries draw animals inaccurate" dog it's also standing on two legs and taking a FAT bong rip wdym

[symbiotic-slime]

“having a special interest can’t be that bad” I had to convince myself not to get a blond mullet because it was “Eddie Brock core”