#and feel a whole lot better

[rassblerry]

K...Krusie...

[formulaonedirection]

Lando Norris Is Doing It His Way

Lando Norris: ‘Being happy with myself isn’t easy’ | Lando Norris: ‘You don’t have to have a killer instinct to be world champion’ | Netflix, Drive To Survive S07E02

[makingshortstorieslong]

A little zine about how I (still) have trouble saying the word aromantic.

I've never made a zine before! I was inspired to try it because @queerliblib mentioned a zine making night in an email. That hasn't happened yet - its on June 26th - but once I had the idea, I couldn't wait, lol. It was nice to put something down on paper and have the finished product to hold onto.

Image descriptions under the cut:

Page 1: Three tiny speech bubbles say: "Do you have a bf? Do you like anyone? What's your type?" A big speech bubble says, "Oh, I don't date." The big speech bubble comes from a heart colored like the aromantic flag. 

Page 2 says: I could say: "Actually, I'm... ...aromantic." ...aro." ...aromantic asexual." ...aroace."

Page 3 says: But there are a few problems:

aromantic: Has been misheard as "A Romantic".

aro: Opaque if you don't already know the term.

aromantic asexual: A mouthful! And sounds...scientific?

aroace: shares The Big Problem: it may require a vocabulary lesson!

Page 4 says: It doesn't actually come up too often! Which is fine. My coworkers, my neighbors, and strangers don't need to know I'm aroace. I just wish I could say it sincerely when I do want someone to know. 

Page 5 says: I always have to smile - laugh - hedge. "Oh, well, actually, I'm kind of like, aromantic? Basically just not interested."

It's been more than 8 years since the first time I said it out loud!  I'm certain of it, but I still can't say it like I mean it!

Page 6 says: The most memorable time I said "I don't date" the guy I was talking to asked "Oh are you asexual?" and I said "Yeah, actually. And aromantic." And we moved on.

That was nice. 

Page 7 says:

The times I've lead with "I'm aromantic" -- well, there's only one I really remember:

"I didn't use to think that was a real thing." 

Other than that time -- even if I use the word, I always explain what it means first! 

Page 8 says: I just hope that one day I'll feel like I can say, simply, confidently: "I'm aromantic" and "I'm aroace."

The words "I'm aromantic" are big and dark green, the color of the top stripe of the aromantic flag. The words "I'm aroace" are big and bright orange, the color of the top stripe of the aroace flag. Three hearts below the words are colored to look like the aromantic, aroace, and asexual flags. 

[binary-bird]

you can take all you want but not who i am

[arnaerr]

Rellana, Twin Moon Knight & Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon

prints ✦ full process on patreon

[shanastoryteller]

i know spn hates good writing and also sam, but the dumpster fire of s4 really could have been salvaged if they'd just played ruby and castiel straight

by which i mean

ruby should have been one of the good guys (honestly it feels like the writers changed their minds last second regarding her anyway)

castiel should have been the villain (which, let's be clear, he totally was)

the point of this is that it would force dean to confront his own bullshit and maybe figure himself out, which not only would have been good television but would have been satisfying to me, personally

sam's problem is that he wants there to be a good equal to every evil. that he believes goodness exists even where it doesn't, that he always wants to give things a chance, that he always has hope. they sound like good traits, up until they're used against him. they reach the station of angels are bad eventually, but it should have been more immediate and visceral, that there is no greater good here. sam should have had this knocked out of him, which would have shattered him in way, to lose this thing he's depended on his whole life, but it really would have hammered home that it's choices that really do matter, not circumstances

dean's problem is always that he sees monsters as monsters with no grey area, that sam always has to play his moral center the second anything becomes complicated. then he goes to hell, breaks, tortures innocents, and an angel yanks him out and tells him that he's a righteous man

dean desperately desperately wants this to be true

because it's sam who they had to look out for, sam who was destined to go darkside, sam with the demon blood

dean doesn't have that excuse

he's just a human man with a hunger for violence who never learned to curb his appetite. who was instead pushed to gorging himself on it, who is left broken and desperate and angry by what he did to save himself. his whole life, his whole self perception for thirty years, was about protecting innocents. then he betrays that in hell. do you think he kept count? how many innocents he destroyed against how many he saved? the day it equaled out, do you think he wished he could weep?

dean is so unbelievably messed up by hell. not the torture he endured, that's barely a blip, but the torture he inflicted is what haunts him

so he needs for sam to be the bad guy

he's using his powers, he's hanging out with demons, he's drinking demon blood. he's the monster. he's inhuman

(he's using his powers and hanging out with demons and drinking demon blood and still he's doing less harm than dean, still he's trying to save people. dean can't accept this, because he can't be the rotten one. he'll forgive sam anything, but never himself, so it has to be sam. because he can fix sam, he'll always love his brother, so if he's evil there's stil a path forward there. but if it's dean? if he's the one going evil? sam's left him before. why would he stay now? if dean is the one going darkside then he loses everything. himself. his brother. it has to be sam)

dean is projecting all his own shit onto sam because he can't deal with any of it, which is why he treats sam like shit, why he treats him in a way that he's never treated him before. it's how he treats himself. and sam has no idea what to do with this, is left reeling and hurt and broken himself by dean doing this to him. sam never thought dean would leave him to die in the panic room, because dean wouldn't, not the dean he's known his whole life, not the dean that loves him. not alone.

but dean would do that to himself. and since sam is his proxy for himself, it's what he does to sam, but sam doesn't know that so all he feels is the weight of betrayal and grief and rage

isn't it funny, almost? the demons brought sam back just as he was, exactly the same. the angels bring back dean but he's not the same. dean comes back wrong, comes back different. but no one wants to say that. to deal with it

having ruby be evil and castiel venerated justifies all of dean's spiraling, all of his punishment. he was right all along, sam was the problem, don't you see?

boring

ruby stays loyal to sam, a demon who chooses something different, who chooses the boy with the demon blood because there's something compelling about sam winchester, as tempting as the apple before eve, and ruby didn't get where she is by knowing better

(remember when sam pulled all the psychic kids together, acted as leader, and resisted azazel? there is a leader in sam, a compassion in him, that azazel had to cheat in order to beat. and if ruby can show him how to win against demons then-)

castiel let sam out of the panic room. he's following orders, because that's his job, and damn the consequences. this should have been seen as the act of betrayal and evil that it was, castiel proving he was never really on their side at all, never on the side of preventing harm. it also would have made his redemption arc mean something, it would have given castiel a lot more to work with if they'd had to really bring him back over

ruby realizes too late what killing lilith means. tries to stop sam, but now that she's here it's too late, kill or be killed. sam accepts that, is willing to die rather than start the apocalypse. but then dean is there, and he can't watch his brother die again, he just can't. so he kills lilith to save dean, when he would have been willing to die himself

ruby gets them out of there. they discover what castiel did, that he pushed forward the apocalypse rather than prevented it

this breaks dean. he finally snaps, but it's good, because everything he'd used to shore himself up before had been terrible and rotted and corrosive

a righteous man is not a good man. dean is forced to confront everything he's done in hell, and after he'd gotten back, everything he put sam through, how he left him in that panic room and almost killed him, how he's treated him for the past year. how it was a demon who tried to help in the end and an angel that damned them

and how sam saved him anyway, damn the consequences

we should have returned to what the show had been building up to from the beginning - that sam loves his brother enough to do terrible things and dean has no idea how to deal with that

so we've got sam and dean on the run with ruby, castiel's slower and much juicier redemption arc, and dean having to pick up the pieces of himself while sam tries to figure out how he gets them out this mess. and sam's guilt is justified here, his aching sense of responsibility, because this time he kills lilith knowing it'll free lucifer. he makes that choice, for dean. and he's determined to fix it

just. demon blood tainted sam and turncoat ruby trying to save the world. the angels trying to end it. all while dean finally accepts the crushing guilt of what he's done and starts to work through it, starts to work on becoming the brother sam lost, on once more being the steady thing sam can hold onto no matter what it takes, because sam choosing him reminds him of something he'd told himself he forgot

he doesn't want to be a righteous man, a torturer, a demon, a victim, a martyr

he just wants to be sam's brother. the one he looks up to, depends on, loves

he wants what he's always wanted

to feel worthy of his little brother's affection

[gunstellations]

In the world I love

_

In a different world

[fish-with-more-eyes]

[ids in alt]

height difference..............

(below the cut: a silly review of my layer management)

so i pile most of my doodles into a single csp file where i just delete the folder after it's done. i told myself that these would be very quick and easy and thus i did not need to name any of my layers, which resulted in:

[video id: scroll through a clip studio paint layer bar, showing a long list of unnamed layers in unnamed folders. end id.]

to be fair, i did get away with it

[ovenproofowl]

I loved the conversation ms cobel had with mark s this episode. call it scientific fascination, infatuation or obsession, but by placing herself directly into both marks' lives, she was the only impartial party shy of the audience itself. she doesn't try to win mark over by selling him fantasies about how he can still have a life afterwards, she's the one who told mark's outie about his innie's relationship with helly, she knows that won't work. instead, she tells him the cold hard facts. that his entire purpose at lumon was to create the very consciousnesses that are keeping gemma trapped in her own perpetual hell. his job has been the direct cause of her suffering, and whether he likes it or not, once his job is over, so is his life. there is no out for him. she isn't appealing to him through his outie's love for his wife, she's appealing to him as a person. a person who is being used, just like she was. a person who will be discarded, just like she would've been if she'd gone with helena that night. she's not waving a secret third option in front of his nose, but making him swallow a cold reality that she's only barely sipped on herself. ulterior motive or no, in that moment she became desperate to save him from making the same decision that kept her trapped beneath lumon's thumb for all those years. she knows what he is, her mind made his. but just like her, he wasn't ready to hear the truth. just like her, he turned his head and ran straight back into lumon's arms.

[backpackingspace]

Odysseus: demanding Athena take off whatever enchantment she put on him the second the situation ends.

Odysseus: who constantly reminds Athena that he has great plans to grow old and die with his wife so don't even think about getting any ideas.

Odysseus: side eye diomedes who has started fucking glowing he has so many enchantments on him: bro you should talk to Athena about getting those removed. You're going to end up immortal or some shit

Diomedes: who has been a solider since he was 5 who has intersting thoughts about his own personhood who has a much more traditional relationship with Athena and would rather literally stab his own eye out with a rusted sword than speak out of turn: I don't know what you're talking about

[lylahammar]

I think a vastly underrated form of anti-capitalism/fascism/discrimination is radical self acceptance. Like just accept being “ugly.” Fuck beauty standards fuck beauty products fuck trends fuck diet culture fuck fitting in fuck “beauty is pain” mindset fuck “healthy things have to taste bad” fuck skin care fuck plastic surgery fuck filters fuck trying to appeal to beauty standards that profit off of your insecurities just exist outside of what the system demands of you. Leave your acne gain weight wear the same clothes forever learn to view what society deems as your “flaws” as an anarchist symbol of power and freedom

[wishfulsketching]

it has only now clicked in my head that my facial features are somewhat similar to Silco's. I feel a *little* better about my weak chin, thank you. It's been a reaaally rough spot for my self-esteem

Looking like "you" will always be more attractive than being ""conventionally attractive"", in my opinion.

I have a fucked up eye (in a boring way, tho. Just a mild case of "lazy eye" that still makes me super super insecure) and lemme tell ya, Silco being the King of Fucked Up Eye is making me happy~

I looove love Silco's whole mouth/chin situation, I am obsessed. You sharing those features mean you absolutely have your fans

[rookamell]

Hogfather/A Hat Full of Sky/The Wee Free Men/A Hat Full of Sky/The Shepherd's Crown/Wyrd Sisters/Carpe Jugulum/Thief of Time/Reaper Man

- Sir Terry Pratchett

So since the Glorious 25th of May is today, the last day of Davrin week for @datvcompanionweeks , I thought I'd do a little crossover and use the free day to do it. Hope, Balance, Protection. Roar of a Lion, Heart of a Halla. He's basically a witch. But there's some themes from the Death books that fit really well too.

"Balance. It was all about balance. That had been one of the first things that she had learned: the centre of the seesaw has neither up nor down, but upness and downness flow through it while it remains unmoved. You had to be the centre of the seesaw so the pain flowed through you, not into you. It was very hard. But she could do it!"

P.S. thank you to the incredible people organising these companion weeks!!!!

[asleepinawell]

absolution was so funny. the whole squad was just a trainwreck 24/7. we got livia running around with her 'i can do what i want' permit and the rest of the squad's reaction progressing from 'livia don't you dare use legavo, hey! livia, i'm talking to you, oh my god there she goes again' to 'livia use legavo right now!!! ahhhhhhh!!!! livia please!!!', and then anise having a nervous breakdown because her mursaat boy toy died and the livia thing is giving her an ulcer, and isgarren continuing to make everything about himself and have a hissy fit every .0005 seconds, and the commander whose career as a junior chef and fish gutter was cut short by all this nonsense and now has to play The Adult for a group of ancient morons having petty drama (with occasional help from waiting sorrow at least), and poky is just there watching and eating popcorn, and bengt tovasson whoever the fuck he is just showed up and is like haha what the fuck this is the best job ever

and then mabon shows up and is like oh you guys lol

10/10 no notes

[clearlydusty]

me and my sisters played Mouthwashing for the first time, and even though I got a ton of spoilers from tumblr this game was still an AMAZING experience. Can you guess who my favorite is??

(also just found out that daisuke describes his experience on the tulpar to Anya, not J*mmy, so I put him there for nothing)

[altschmerzes]

seen one too many snide posts about this in the last week or so but did you know that if you don't enjoy scenes in smut establishing consent or checking in then you simply don't have to read them and you don't have to go online and whine about how they're Consent Posturing and Purity Culture and Sanitizing Everything and God Just Kill Me Now. like you can have a preference without making it into a three act morality play, which is ironically what you are accusing other people of doing.

the same goes for like, detailed content warnings on fics. or content warnings at all. you can just skip those. they're not a sign of Purity Culture Gone Too Far or Those Damn Puriteens or whatever. you can dislike things without being an asshole about them or implying they're Taking Away What's Good And Correct About Fic Or Creativity.