#STILL! it was a lot of work to make the background look like that. lots of scrapped trees and colors and whatever

[fadinglight123]

Hi I’m literally studying to be an ASL interpreter. I’ve taken 6 total semesters of ASL classes so far in my life, some of them review or focused specifically on the nuances of finger spelling specifically and I’m still a ways out from being done and feeling prepared to be certified as an interpreter, so I’m gonna chime in here too to infodump.

ASL is a completely different language than English. That should be obvious but a lot of hearing people assume it’s just a 1:1 translation between the two when it really really isn’t. ASL has completely different grammar rules for formulating a sentence from English in order for it to make sense. If you sign a sentence in the order you would say the words in spoken English, a deaf person can tell what you’re saying but it would be a little nonsensical. Facial expressions are part of the grammar system for ASL, not just there for expressiveness.

There are multiple words with signs that are identical or almost identical. And for some of them, the way you tell what someone is trying to sign is via sentence context, but for the rest, your facial expressions literally change what word your sign will be interpreted as.

The difference between signing Late and signing Not Yet is sticking your tongue out for the latter.

Make a weird face while signing Bug and instead you can sign Orgasm.

This is only further complicated by the fact that ASL has numerous regional dialects, to the point where if you know enough variants you can sometimes tell where someone is from or at very least where the person who taught them sign language was from based on how they sign certain words. That’s not even getting into the existence of dialects used specifically by individual families.

That is just how ASL works. The first thing I was told when I started learning ASL is that I would have to get comfortable making faces and movements that would look and feel strange to me in order to be good at the language. Without good expressive facial expressions, you lose both tone and grammar in ASL. The fact I have a theater background means I’ve had an easier time with the expression side of the grammar than some of my classmates who don’t.

So yes @theknightlywolfe she is an interpreter and she is doing her job well in order to make sure Deaf and Hard of Hearing people can understand this address the same as you can, in their native language.

And to make it very clear, this is a freeze frame that has caught the interpreter mid motion. You’re looking at a still from an angle that does not capture the motions or expressions she is actually making. If you watch the full address, this moment is around the 32:50 mark. She flies through it smoothly enough that watching it repeatedly I’m having trouble figuring out which sign she was in the process of signing in this still. What looks like an exaggerated face of disgust in this still is in context in the video her flicking her hand and scrunching her face briefly while going through the signs of “discriminate” “disparage” “deport”, which as pointed out above, are negative words with negative emotions being talked about in a negative tone and conveying that feeling is very appropriate.

It is understandable to find a language or culture you know nothing about and are not part of confusing or even offputting. But to confidently make assertions on something like this without understanding or knowing the full context and letting that drive your outrage is deeply unhelpful and exactly how issues of ableism, racism, and other forms of discrimination endure in spaces that otherwise work to eliminate those attitudes.

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

[tommykinard]

Coloring anon here, yes, I would definitely like to know more about how you color frame by frame and the other techniques you mentioned! It would be much appreciated, thank you!

Hi anon! I'd be happy to go over my preferred methods for colouring!

First resort (ideal):

Painting over shots with little movement (the first method in this tutorial)

Colour manipulation using selective colours (the second method in this tutorial; alternate tutorial -> i also sometimes add a hue/saturation layer on top to manipulate the cyans/blues as well)

Second resort:

Keyframes for shots with consistent movement where it's easy to hide "imperfections" (tutorial 1, tutorial 2)

Last resort:

Frame by frame colouring -> DISCLAIMER: the way I do this method is the easiest way I've gotten it to work for me but that also means that it's very inflexible when it comes to editing any of the colouring afterwards. Once you start colouring in frame animation mode you're basically locked in so you need your gifs to be exactly the way you want them prior to adding your colour

So in this tutorial I'll go over how I do my frame by frame colouring as well as how I create actions to automate the repetitive parts of this process! (Some resources that explain how to create actions are here: 1 2)

To use the select subject feature you will need Photoshop CC 2018 or later

Step 1: Preparing your gif with base colouring

So first you want to do your base colouring for your gif in timeline mode, which I've explained here. I keep my gifs short (ideally 40 frames or less) since this colouring process is tedious!

I make sure that in my hue/saturation layer, I turn the saturation in the yellow, green, cyan, and blue tabs all down to -100 (and for the yellows I usually add around +20 to +60 in lightness)

Here's my gif with the base colouring that I'll be starting with:

Note: turning down the saturation in almost all the colours gives you that nice silver/grey neutral background to paint on top of. It's a lot less noticeable when your painted layers aren't perfect

Step 2: Converting to Frame Animation Mode

I use the save action from this action pack to convert my gif from timeline mode to frame animation mode.

You cannot edit your base colouring from this point onwards!

Step 3: Using Select Subject

If you're recording an action this is the step you would *start recording*

This is what your window should look like:

Making sure your first frame and first layer are selected, go to Select at the top of your window and click Subject

You should then see the marching ants outline around the person in your gif

You then want to create a new solid colour fill layer (which can be found when you click that little circle icon at the bottom of your layers panel), and set the layer blending mode to colour.

The layer mask will automatically be created since you had the marching ants outline.

Since my person is in colour and not the background, I want to invert the layer mask by clicking on it and using command + i (or ctrl + i), and now this is what it looks like:

Note: Select subject isn't always perfect!!!, depending on how cluttered the scene is and how much contrast there is between your person and the background, select subject could either do a really good job like it did here, or screw up a little like it did here:

That's okay though because it still gives us a good base to start from! We can fix any issues by painting with black and white brushes on the layer mask.

Step 3.5: Create clipping mask

Thanks to @wolfchans for telling me about this because it gives us back a little bit of flexibility when colouring frame by frame! Instead of merging down, we can make a clipping mask instead. Right click the solid colour fill layer and select create clipping mask.

If you're recording an action, it's at this point where I would *stop recording*

Step 4: Fixing the layer mask if needed

So now I want his jacket and t-shirt to also be purple, and to show his fingers behind the glass. I make sure the layer mask is selected, and paint with a brush at 60-70% hardness (painting with black erases the colour, painting with white shows the colour). User smaller brush sizes to paint smaller details!

This is what my canvas and layer mask look like now.

Step 5: Repeat

Now I click on my second frame and second layer, and repeat steps 3-4. As you can see, using the clipping mask allows you to still see and edit the colouring of the previous frame, just make sure you click on the right frame and it's corresponding layer when you're doing further editing.

This is where an action is super helpful in cutting down all the repetitive steps and clicks you need to do. So at this point I'd just play the action I created and paint on the layer mask as needed.

Repeat for all your frames and then you're done! After this I convert it back to timeline mode again so that I can add my text and do any other effects such as blending or transitions. Hope this helped!!

[johnwickb1tsch]

lessons in anatomy VIII

a yandere art professor John Wick x drawing model muse! reader AU... (also featuring Matt from River's Edge. If you haven't seen the movie that's ok, I will fill in the gaps as we go...) ->chapter map

VIII. 

-It’s possible you’re hanging around the art building a little early for your shift, on the day you know Matt’s critique is going down. You can’t eavesdrop without making yourself obvious, but you hover in the hallway, pretending to look at student work on the wall. 

The moment you see Matt as he exits Wick’s classroom, you know it didn’t go well. “What did he say?” you ask with a frown, unable to fathom what problems the professor might have found with Matt’s work. 

Matt, however, just shakes his head. “He’s such an asshole. He picked apart every fucking little thing. We’re not fucking medical students, I don’t know the name of every muscle and bone.” You can tell he’s in a terrible mood over it, and you offer a sympathetic smile. 

“I guess…he’s just trying to make sure you learn.” You can’t think of anything else to say. You’ve forgotten a lot, but you remember having to draw medical style diagrams in life drawing 101. It’s not unreasonable on Wick’s part to expect it, unfortunately. 

“Why do you always apologize for him?” The edge in Matt’s tone takes you aback. You’ve never seen this side of your usually sweet and laid back art student, but everyone has a bad day once in a while. 

“I’m not. I’m sorry he was mean to you. That’s fucked up.” 

Maybe Wick is having a bad day too? You think about how sweet he was to you at the beginning of the semester, compared to the professional coolness he treats you with now. Something is up with that man, and maybe you shouldn’t care, but a part of you wonders what demons he’s fighting on the daily. You’re sure it hasn’t been easy, after his wife died.   

Matt groans, raking his fingers through his long hair agitatedly. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes sheepishly. “Want to hang out tonight?” he offers. “The guys and I are going to watch a movie.”

“Uh…” You feel terrible, but you would rather eat glass than hang out with his friends. You want to cheer him up though. “You can come over to my place if you want.” 

He looks at you, tilting his head like he's reading everything between your lines. “What's wrong with my place?”

“Matt…I do not feel ok around your friends.”

He looks at the ground, his hands shoved in his pockets. “They don't mean anything by it.”

“Yes they do. You are way too sweet to be hanging around with those assholes.”

He bristles at this. “They’re my friends. They're like my family. I've known them my whole life.”

“Okay?”

“So you’re too good for us, huh?”

You're know he's just in a bad mood, but it still stings like a knife between the ribs. “I didn't say that.”

“Sure. I see you, y/n.”

He clearly had a chip on his shoulder about this, and you hate it, that there's a part of you that wants to cave. That wants to believe you're overreacting, and that your survival instincts are just off, and you’re being a stuck up bitch. 

Deep down, you know you’re not. 

You've put yourself in uncomfortable situations like this before for boys…and you're not going to do it again. No matter how heartbreakingly handsome Matt is, or how good a kisser. 

“Don’t be like that. Come over. I'll make you dinner. We can watch any movie you want.” You lift your eyebrows at him, and only an idiot wouldn’t understand the code for we can makeout while a movie plays in the background.

He looks up at you through his hair, and you can tell he's sorely tempted. But pride wins out, and he shakes his head. You guess it's bros before hoes. How predictable.

Well, they can just have themselves a circle jerk for all you care. 

You watch him stump away, and you don't know why your eyes sting and your chest feels too tight.

TBC...

___

->chapter map pinterest board/ photo credits

[ranchclan]

📜 ❔📝⛔️

📜 How does your clan’s warrior code differ from other clans?

Ranchclan in particular has a pretty lax warrior code! Especially compared to Valleyclan who can be rather traditional, Ranchclan is much more welcoming of outsiders (doesn’t allow daylight warriors though, you can be an ex-kittypet but your focus has to be on your clan, not your folk), Obviously clerics are allowed to have kits, as are the leader and deputy even if there’s talk about it. I reference a lot of @/bonefalls work and their expanded warrior code, including stuff like Queens Rights.

❔Do you have any suggestions for people looking to start their own clangen blogs?

Include everything in your notes, don’t include everything in your notes. Which doesn’t make much sense, but what I’m saying is like, look at Everything. The relationship tab, cats thoughts, patrol beginnings and events, and you don’t have to write All of it, because a lot of it is probably useless, but when you’re able to string a couple of events relating to a small group, it really works out in your favor for connecting dots and plot lines.

Play 24 moons ahead, and DRAW 24 moons ahead. This may just be a me thing, but having the buffer pages of regular updates on queue, and giving me time to work on 25-48 and 49-72. It also helps with plot writing because you don’t get attached and have big introductions for loners who join the clan only to die from redcough the next moon. This way you can track important plot lines between multiple moons and be able to set the scene for how and when events happen, it’s also great for me making bonusranch content for inbetween because I get interactions from people who inspire them the week of posting ya know.

Speaking of, don’t be afraid to move around small events in the timeline or diverge from clangen as much as you’d like, it’s just the base, and for the most part it doesn’t matter if someone comes out of the closet on moon 23 or 24 if it fits with your pacing better.

Keep your clan small. It’s going to grow rapidly, as clangen is wont to do. Ranchclan in particular has smaller litters for whatever reason, but don’t be afraid to cull kits (sorry), loners, or other clan-joiners to reduce your population and keep only the characters who have plot lines and investments. Otherwise! Save them for mass extinction fodder.

Typefaces, typefaces, typefaces. So many clangen blogs suffer from the fact that some of y’all have ass handwriting or pick really swirly cursive fonts, or write too small! (not to call out anyone specific, many blogs do this and I get the reasons for it!) but making a clean, concise, and legible typeface is going to up your engagement, and makes your panels look cleaner. There are nice handwritten fonts out there, or making your own like ranchclans custom typeface from Calligraphr. Same thing with actually labeling characters in your panels, it’s really useful especially when you’re just starting and introducing characters, and/or when your clan gets large asf and needs reminders. Something I really want to do for Ranchclan sometime is go through and make image ids for the whole thing, captions in the description, and I want to go through with a colorblind filter to make sure that my type doesnt blend in with the background

📝 What do your notes look like?

These are some of my older notes, and like I said previously , a lot of these events get moved around to different moons where less happens. I’ve also started taking more in-depth notes since I started, and events I don’t use but still like, I save for bonusranch content. I sometimes have notes like if someone is injured and it later leaves a scar, I go back and mention where the injury in placed in my notes for future reference.

⛔️How long are you planning on making your comic? For as long as you feel like it, or is there a set end? Also @nimbusclan for asking this question too!!

So I was actually just talking with my partner about it, and I think the goal for Ranchclan is 1000 moons!! I’m not holding myself super strongly to that if I end up losing passion about it, but so far I’m having the time of my life working on Ranchclan and will keep doing it till I’m bored, no set end, just the cats daily lives. I’ll be working on other projects in the meantime, like Dungeonclan (sorry I started Houndclan and did get bored, dogs are less interesting to draw despite their variety), and expanding ranchclans world with Valleyclan and Wanderingclan. Maybe someday I’ll post about my human specific ocs (*cough* dnd characters *cough*)

Thank you so so so much for all the questions!! I really appreciate it my dude 🧡🧡🧡

[crispycreambacon]

🫀 Oh, your heart! Aortic work of art! My love, my knife, to carve it out, your life 🫀

— a redraw of this piece! click below for the uncensored version and the original piece plus alt. versions & commentary —

I finally caved and redrew my Butcher Vanity-inspired art from last year because people are reblogging it, and I cannot let that slide. Truth be told: I HATE that piece. The pose was not at all dynamic like I wanted it to be, and the expression looks very off because I sacrificed those things for a focus on rendering. And I dON'T EVEN LIKE HOW THE RENDERING TURNED OUT 😭

So I redid everything from the pose to the composition to giving the Substitute a cute little butcher outfit as a nod to the song. Me thinks he would eat Ryan's organs after he makes his skin suit and especially savor his heart. Because that's love to him. By the way, just for fun: why don't you look at the hex code of the background? :3

Anyways, this is the first time I did a fully-rendered piece on Clip Studio Paint, and I'm really proud of how it turned out! I did this concept a lot more justice than I did with the original. This song is still him for real, and it will always be owned by him to me.

[arkin-oconnell]

It was nice to be able to talk about his career when Arkin really didn’t think he had a career to return to. He believed his mess ups were impossible to come back from and that he was gonna be just an ex actor. Not one still getting work. But being able to goof around and make these sort of jokes about his career revival actually had Arkin optimistic. Sure, none of it was serious but he absolutely loved it. It helped make things seem less serious. Like he could just walk right into a studio lot again. “ being basically sexy Nosferatu? Yeah I’m pretty sure when I was born sister of mercy was playing in the background. Really made the environment weird when Addison was born too “ he teased acknowledging the twins different visual aesthetics

“ I like your weirdness. It’s very charming “ he noted before he scrunched his face at the mention of Nikki’s mom. His aunt had always about as much to say as him own mother. Holidays were always a bit tense cause of it. “Well first of all, you’re not a train wreck. I’m sorry but I’ve taken all that energy for the family. And I’m not sharing. “ he joked. “ but really Nikki, ignore her. You’re amazing and trust me there are a million places who would love your ideas “

“ we’re not giving me a rebrand “ Arkin immediately glared back at the notion of him changing his look. “ this has been my signature look all my life, we’re not changing my dead Byronic era poet look. It cost a lot of money to look the melancholy “ @ambivalenceshefelt

Was she being ridiculous? Absolutely. But she'd also bet money that the world would eat an Arkin O' Connell movie like that up..especially if it was followed up by a 'how i reclaimed my life' type of tell-all interview. God..people were weird, poor Ark. Nikki laughed. "I believe it's..engraved in your DNA by now so..." she shrugged a shoulder.

She smirked. "I might as well make a payday out of all my weirdness." she joked. Well, about getting paid, not about being weird. "Got to prove to darling Linda my life's not a total trainwreck, you know." she mused. Her mother seemed to think that of her kids; they were never doing well enough in her eyes. Well, sorry mommy, not everyone's made to be a ceo.

"It's your trademark." she amended for him. "Which is awesome but..we're on a rebrand, baby!" she clapped her hands like she's seen those supposedly high-profile managers do in movies "We have to find you a new signature look." || @arkin-oconnell

[mmiirage]

a VERY belated drawing for the 10th anniversary of over the garden wall 🍂

[likesdoodling]

It's been a little over a year since I started using Photoshop, this piece is from the last few days (February 2025 yeye), while the piece below is the first thing I drew with Photoshop (January 2024). A lot of stuff has happened since then (reaching the end of Ascendance of a Bookworm for example-), but Rozemyne is still a character I draw pretty often, and I still have Photoshop, so this is to see if I've gotten better art wise since then (I would say I have :D)

[moe-broey]

Fellas can you take this somewhere else. Maybe. Just not in the fucking halls. Thanks 🫡

I couldn't resist drawing out these tags I wrote on a dif post LMFAO

Moe just has...... SO many problems.......

Close-ups of my fave shots!

The elusive Líf...

[micechicken]

Link-Fitzgerald family making Christmas cookies as I've been promising for YEARS now...

[doubleedgemode]

The Dandy with his Hand on his chest

I wanted to do a big piece before the month ended and I had been thinking on drawing a study of "The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest" by El Greco with Slayer for a good while, because I adore that painting and believe it fits him, since it has a mysterious yet noble aura to me. Very dandy!

I love Slayer's Rev2 Color 4, so I got really happy when it returned as Color 10 in Strive, now with a very stylish nail polish, too.

[destructive-delight]

have i ever complained about the b//sd anime key visuals on here? because i have some fucking complaints.

[pine-arten]

i genuinely kept forgetting to post these

i'm pretty burnt out on drawing, so i decided to end the cringetober challenge. as much as i would like to complete it, i would die

day 16 (objecthead) day 15/18 (song lyrics/old art redraw)

i got through halfway the month, which is honestly still a win for me.

look here for a cropped version of the redraw, and the original picture

[kellystar321]

.

[drcabcde]

I never make New Year's resolutions but this year I need to revamp my old OCs. Everyone's getting updated art that I don't hate looking at no matter how little I actually use them.

[inkskinned]

lately i've been a feminist killjoy.

2. i pirate all my media, and therefore am not familiar with most tv commercials. i went to a superbowl party. around me were appetizers and bean dip and wine and the rolling movement of people talking - and meanwhile i was sitting there, stonefaced and bonechilled. the extraordinary, willful, in-your-face sexism and racism of advertising. what an odd whiplash: the warm and smiling hosts handing me nachos - in the background, some casual repetition of conservative gender roles. more than once i had to turn to my girlfriend - are you seeing this?

3. often i think of how rainbow capitalism is a canary in a coal mine. i think of what one google employee said when they took down their "don't be evil sign" - he mentioned that while it hadn't really done anything, the removal of it was... eerie. it isn't that i needed pride-themed fast fashion items from target. it's that the pushback to said items has now resulted in the company's looming silence. it's that the pushback worked. target is now among the list of companies aiming to "roll back" DEI initiatives. a false friend, i guess - but a bellwether nonetheless.

4. i remember five, ten years ago rolling my eyes at the faux-feminist faux-activist stuff advertisements would put out. i mean, who can forget that pepsi ad, oh my god. i remember girlboss anthems and lukewarm representation. but it did seem like someone was, you know, trying to be thoughtful. but if we follow the money, i think it's fair to say it used to be a good idea to at least appear "politically correct." now though - who cares? look at the man we chose for politics.

5. i am working my girlfriend through her first watch of FMA: Brotherhood. it should be a sweet deal, and instead, i oscillate from peaceful to pacing. the ads drive me insane. i've been counting - at least three involve a man silencing a woman in some way. two involve a white man silencing a woman of color. in my least favorite, she's sitting at her desk, trying to say the same thing he's saying. but he keeps fucking interrupting her. ha ha. don't even ask me what the ad is even for. i don't understand the plot of the thing. i think the whole idea is just "man talks over a woman. buy our product" but with like, somehow worse pacing.

6. on national tv, in front of millions of viewers, kanye posts an ad for his website that is selling a single white T shirt, a product titled HH. a swastika is emblazoned on it. people can't even talk about how fucking terrible that is - their videos get flagged as soon as they actually say what's happening. i am sitting at home staring at my stupid phone, just quietly stunned. we can make a rapist president, but we cannot say the word rape on most social media platforms. elon can nazi salute on television without consequence, but you can't use the word "female" in your research grant request without being flagged. the enormity of it all is impossible to grasp.

7. there's a company called "his", which sells things for erectile dysfunction. the ads are trucks and masculinity and very gender affirming. the same company has a "hers" line, which is a barely-tested weight-loss injection developed and sold by recently-rebranded absolutely evil company Eli Lilly. in the ad, women who are "overweight" grapple with their barely-visible stomach and smile, beautifully at peace while delivering their own "treatment."

8. i read a lot, though. i spend a lot of time online. someone recently said i write almost exclusively from a place of panic, which they didn't like. it made me laugh though - can any artist say differently right now? still. still! i sat on that couch and watched how casually bigotry is repeated, with no real audience reaction. am i just radicalized and unfortunately very easily annoyed? am i the problem here? can't i just like, relax and let it happen?

9. we stand in line at the movie theatre. i make some snide remark about how the poster we're looking at is basically "sexy trophy smiles knowingly at our hero, nerdy boy". from behind me, some guy snorts down his nose. feminist killjoy.

10. the thing is. i don't want to be like this. it's just like. in my fucking home.