#as a disabled person I just find this idea funny

[skelswritingcorner]

Imagine if the first human that Cybertronians met had an invisible disability of some kind, and they all think that humans are kind of fucked up. This is until they contact other humans, and then they find out that no, humans don't regularly faint if they get up too fast that one just has an iron deficiency.

Feel free to add to this y'all. I encourage it.

[atley01]

Tips for all of my alternative & Chronically ill/ disabled friends!

A big thing that's helped me feel more comfortable accommodating my disability is finding accessibility tools that reflect my personality / interests.

I should put a disclaimer that making disability "aesthetic" should not be the most important thing about your health! I do this where I can to help me accept my disability.

Here are some alt accessibility tools I've found / made & utilized for myself!

1. If you're prone to nausea:

Anti-nausea meds work, but I also find that peppermints work just as well! I always have mints on me. At home, I've stored them in this coffin container!

I do keep a few of these mints in my bag, as well as ginger hard candies (they taste very strong, but are VERY efficient). I got the peppermints at Dollar tree, and they've genuinely been a life saver.

Alternatively, I've found this adorable ouija board altoids container that has mints in it!

The mints are even fun-shaped! I also saw other horror-movie themed altoid containers in-store as well. Since they're tiny, they dont work well for severe nausea, but they are still helpful!

2. If you struggle with temperature-regulation:

For me, my hands and feet are always FREEZING, but my core will be super warm. What has helped me a lot has been gloves and fuzzy socks!

I have a lot of spooky gloves like this, but I prefer the fingerless ones because I can still use my phone and be warm at the same time! I've also heard my friends who are wheelchair users say gloves can help protect your hands if you use a manual wheelchair. Another added bonus is that certain gloves can help limit mobility for those of you who struggle with hypermobility in your hands.

3. Do you have noise-canceling headphones? Decorate them!

I decorated my N/C headphones in shark stickers because sharks are my special interest!

These are Soundcore Life Q30's. I have gotten compliments on the stickers many times! You could put halloween stickers on yours or decorate your headphones in other ways! I've seen people crochet horns onto the headband portion of their headphones.

4. I would recommend any chronically ill person carry a cup around to stay hydrated:

ESPECIALLY If you need electrolytes. You can either have a drink like propel or powerade in your cup (or any drink of your choice, and you could put electrolyte packets in there).

This specific cup isn't the best at keeping my drink cold, but it holds a decent amount of liquid! And it's spooky. If you're someone who struggles to drink enough water, I've found that getting a fun cup helps me a lot!

5. Make communication bracelets!

If I'm having a difficult time voicing my needs, or I'm in a verbal shutdown, these bracelets can come in handy for me.

I'll either wear them on my wrist when needed or present them to my friends so they can read the bracelet and understand what I need. I keep them on a keychain that way I dont lose them and can transport them easily. An example of some of the phrases I've turned into bracelets is; "No spoons," "spoon debt," "verbal shutdown," and "flashbacks," (for when I'm having a PTSD episode.) You could make a bracelet with the medical condition you have as a DIY medical-alert bracelet. I added tiny spoon charms to some of my bracelets because I thought it was funny.

5. Mobility aids!

Decorate your mobility aids with things like stickers, kandi, lights, etc! Pinterest, instagram, and tiktok have a lot of good ideas. You can easily customize your mobility aids to look spooky or look however you want them to!

6. Bags!

I know that for me, I NEED to carry a bag around whenever I go out because it has important medical items that I need, but it also keeps all my important items like keys, id, ect, in one spot so that I dont forget / lose them. SOME spooky bags are expensive, but you could find a plain black bag at a thrift store or walmart and accessorize it with patches, keychains, and pins! I've seen people paint designs onto their bags before as well.

• You dont have to spend a lot of money on your accessibility tools!

Find ways to DIY them, or get them secondhand! You could even try working with household items you already have! A lot of these items, or items very similar to it, can be found at the dollar tree - even the materials needed to make the beaded bracelets! (Outside of the spoon charms)

Thats all!

If I think of more, you'll see me again! Be spooky, and be kind to yourself!

[starleska]

how would wally react to a neighbor who uses ASL (sign language) to talk?

i love your head canons!

thank you very much!!! you're so kind :3c ooooh this is a wonderful idea, thank you for sending it in!! just to let you know - i'm British (unfortunately), and my personal experience of sign language is influenced by BSL, so i've tried to make this widely applicable for anyone who may use sign language. i hope you don't mind! 🥰

Wally Darling x Reader Who Uses Sign Language headcanons

⭐ Wally is versed in several types of sign language, as well as Makaton and lip-reading. as a neighbourly fellow who is ever-curious about the lovely people who stumble into his life, Wally realised early on that communication via voiced speech alone wasn't inclusive, practical, or possible for some of his friends. in fact, Wally first began learning sign language to communicate with Julie, who has a tendency to become nonverbal when overwhelmed. soon, Wally and the rest of the neighbourhood realised the enormous benefits of being versed in sign language, and began hosting impromptu classes to practice their signing. everyone in the neighbourhood is able to communicate well through sign language, but Wally is undoubtedly the most fluent! ⭐ when Wally first meets you, he is adorably excited by the way you talk. although he loves talking to his friends through sign, Wally finds conversations with you incredibly stimulating. you're interesting, and funny, and know just what to sign to make him break out into peals of his odd, halting laughter. indeed, Wally talks much faster via sign than he does through verbal speech. he often gets swept up in the act of signing; sometimes, you'll need to grab hold of his hands to get him to slow down, as he signs too fast in his excitement! ⭐ Wally is fascinated by the visuals of you signing. as we know, Wally eats with his eyes, but the things he visually devours are not limited to food. early into your friendship, Wally shyly requests that you ramble to him in sign so he can become more accustomed to your unique movements and sign-related dialect. you're happy to do so, but after a few minutes of talking to Wally, you realise his eyes have grown large: akin to an owl's eyes, absorbing all light like a black hole. you gesture to Wally to snap him out of his trance, and it takes a few blinks for his pupils to return to their normal size. he giggles, and apologises, signing: "Sorry! You speak beautifully. I was hungry." for the rest of the day, you press Wally to elaborate on what he means, but he just gives you a coy look and a shake of his head. awww i loved writing this one, thanks so much @xo-destiny!! we need more sign language headcanons in the world, and discussion of disability and non-voiced ways of communication too. hope you like this 🥰💖

[whetstonefires]

i mean, i would contest some of this analysis, because there's also the fact that the films do in fact handle Tony's problem as being heart-exclusive. it should affect his lung capacity, logically, but textually it doesn't.

and he declared at the end of IM3 that he Fixed It For Good, in a little narrated science montage that framed not having gotten around to fixing his disability before this as a matter of lacking the correct form of motivation, self-respect, and clarity of purpose--as, in fact, a result of character flaws he was now triumphing over.

tony's cure was presented as a moral victory in the battle of man-against-self. he's rewarded for his strength of will and brilliance by being freed from his disability.

so the parts of the fandom that engage with the idea that tony stark has a disability that extends in scope beyond 'dependent for heart function on giant epic pacemaker that also powers his supersuit' and in time past 'Iron Man III' are the parts of the fandom that are motivated to actively read interesting human frailties into the character, even against the text. very normal fandom activity! no shade!

this is also true to a considerable extent of the people willing to engage with steve rogers as someone experienced with human frailty. it was an explicit, thematically centered part of the text in the first Captain America film, but marvel hasn't actively acknowledged it since, so you have to care about his character to read it as still relevant.

i definitely noticed back when i was still reading MCU fic that tony-centric stories quite routinely characterized steve without any acknowledgement that he hadn't always been exactly what he looks like in Avengers (2012), to a sometimes comical degree, because that was the text the fic writers were engaging with and they had no motive to engage with cap any deeper.

the thing is that i, personally, find people interested in expanding further on tony stark's human frailties tend to be really insufferable about it.

because the iron man films traffic in a moral logic where suffering somehow pays off harmful behavior. like if Tony gets tazed by SHIELD Agents this means he's been 'punished' for his 'childish' lashing-out and destructive reactions to his impending mortality, which then closes the book on those actions and relegates them to the past, paid down like bills and therefore irrelevant, in some elaborate system of balances where at the end if you get a positive sum due to stacking up enough moral tax write-offs you have Won at Good Guy.

since this is the logic of the films, it gets extended into the fandom a lot, and i find it a toxic and distressing moral framework to begin with and absolutely heinous as a way to approach disability.

like honestly i've seen the idea of tony's hypothetical physical disability as well as his actual textual one leveraged to raise his whump score and thereby forcibly render him more sympathetic so many times i am exhausted at the thought of engaging with the idea even in purest good faith, because at this point i expect it to be used for emotional manipulation.

meanwhile the people interested in Steve's history of disability can be absolutely precious about it, and the ones getting in shoving competitions with Iron Man fans can be terribly smug, but quite a lot of the time outside that they're just examining it, and its impact on his character, and its historical context, rather than trying to Win anything.

it's allowed to just exist. so i prefer that by a lot.

What would be interesting is taking the way neither of them ever want to deal with their own damage, and the deep shame they both attach to weakness, and like. Looking at how that relates to disability issues in the larger world, and how many things haven't really changed.

Something something Steve Roger's was disabled and became able-bodied, Tony Stark was able-bodied and became disabled, the processes that led to those changes were intimately connected to their becoming heroes and just as connected to their respective treatments by fandom

There's a point in here but I'm too congested to stay awake and write it out

[sharkboywrites]

Hello! May I ask for the BG3 gang with an autistic gn Tav who is. Very Very Large but also quite young (think like... Older teen.) who just decides that Astarion/Wyll/Halsin/Gale etc is their new favourite person and WILL NOT leave them alone.

It would be very funny if they just... didn't realise Tav was actually A Kid™ and thought they were just a weirdly clingy grownup. Except Halsin. Halsin would know Immediately.

Inspired by my dumb ass being enormous and this having happened to me irl many times.

Bg3 Characters With a Young Older Looking Autistic Tav

A/n: This idea is so silly I love it. This is obviously written as platonic because reader is younger and baulder's gate characters are older and I don't write weird stuff like that lol although I'm sure that's expected. Also also i did all of them together because I do not have the energy to write sperate headcannons for each of them, dont worry they all get their moment

Gn Reader, Child/teen Reader

This was an... interesting situation

Everyone on the team assumed you were just assumed you were a bit childish for an adult

I mean could you blame them? You were massive, anyone would assume you were an adult

Except for Halsin

He could easily tell your age, but it's something he kept between the two of you, mainly for safety

Halsin takes more of a dad approach if you cling to him

He's very protective of you and teaches you new skills

He also keeps anyone else on the team from hitting on you, for obvious reasons, but wouldn't say why

He's also the most attentive when it comes to your autism, he's always keeping an eye out for you and helping when he can

It took the others longer to find, though

Wyll was the second to put two and two together

Once he realized, he grilled you about why you didn't tell anyone about it

He isn't too harsh though, and takes a more "fun uncle" role

He always makes sure to entertain you, he's the guy who's got fidgets on him just for you incase you need them

He also decides not to tell anyone for your safety after consulting with Halsin, but he does wish you said something sooner

Gale is the second to last to find out, after trying to teach you something about magic

He had questioned why you didn't know any of this, it was supposed to be common knowledge for someone your age

Or someone he thought was your age

He just stared at you blankly for a good minute after you told him how old you actually were

He's more upset at himself for not noticing to be honest

He realizes how that actually makes a lot of sense

Gale, like Halsin, also takes a more fatherly approach

he teaches you things you may have not known before, and is one of the most helpful when it comes to working through your autism

He's a knowledgeable man and can tell what you need, probably before you do

He's very protective, often insisting that you stay out of battles, but it's not like you listen to him in that department

For comedy's sake, Astarion is the last to find out, and he is pissed

He's mad that no one told him, even if it wasn't too long Gale found out and most of the party knew

He looked so dumbfounded when he found out and like Gale, was more mad that he didn't realize sooner

He's upset, but he gets over it quickly after a day or two of snarky comments and like Wyll, takes on a cool uncle postion

The whole party suddenly wants to protect you and it's suddenly become one of their top goals to return you to your parent/guardian if you have one, next to y'know, getting the worms out of your head

If you don't have somewhere to go they may or may not argue on who takes you once it's all over

Generally, you're taken good care of from then on, much better than you were before

Everyone's very attentive to you and tries to be aware of what you may need at any given point

Since they all have some type of trauma, they want to make sure the same doesn't happen to you, especially so young

Being in this situation is stressful for anyone, let alone a child, and a child with a disability

They do their best to make you happy and keep you safe

They may struggle, but they do their best, and now you have people to call family

[thurio-edau]

SBG GANG MENTAL ANALYSIS

yup, him for part two. funny thing despite Aiden being my favourite character I'm most excited for the other three posts I'll make, especially the last one. there's a lot to unpack here so

also im writing this with a migraine pls read it-

Part 2: Aiden Clark

ah, yes. the obviously-mentally-ill from the start fan favourite Aiden Clark. let's go.

first, I want to start with something I find really important about his character, what makes him heavily mischaracterized in the fandom. the 'psychopath' cliche.

the terms 'psychopath', 'insane' and 'unstable' are often confused with each other due to media stereotypes, such as Aiden here. one, he is not a psychopath. psychopath literally means a self-centered person who lacks sympathy, affection and care; making them far from most other characters in their franchise. their lack of sympathy/empathy often makes them criminalized, here

disturbing content warning, for an example of a psychopath.

let's take Gressil from Homesick for example since a lot of SBG readers also read Homesick. so, here, Gressil is a perfect example of an actual psychopath. his lack of empathy makes him torment others, he's very self-centered. and when asked why he's doing this? he says he was bored. let's look at Aiden here. what does Aiden do when bored? probably dumb ideas or annoy Tyler. not torturing people for fun. Aiden is just a boy who likes thrills, but he has a sense of empathy, care and justice.

you wanna see a psychopathic Aiden?? the canvas is it

(our local Logan hater is publishing the canvas eps go checc beachy out)

but that's him, not our Aiden. canvas does not equal originals y'all

alright, now since we got that cleared out!! firstly, ADHD.

I think everyone in the fandom is already aware that Aiden is ADHD but I'm still going to talk about it just like Ashlyn's autism. Red has also said that she wrote Aiden with ADHD in mind but hadn't canonically confirmed anyone as neurodivergent. let's start with the main symptoms of ADHD, also known as Attention Decifit and Hyperactivity Disorder.

I know about 5 different ADHD people myself and did some research, it probably won't be extremely accurate since I'm not ADHD myself, but I'll try to do whatever I can. first with the AD part, Attention Decifit.

now as seen, he doesn't exactly have any problems with theorizing itself. but the problem is that his attention just goes away easily.

i mean cmon bro was making memes on the job

he tries to do work, but can't. he has a low attention span which makes him not able to concentrate. he can't keep it up for long, he'll get distracted or bored too easily about things that doesn't interest in specially.

it's just distracting. what his attention is on constantly changes, there's more to that after the ADHD part but we're here for now.

the hyperactivity... it's a lot more apparent. but I should explain the insane-unstable thing before that.

insane means that someone's mental health is not in an okay situation, where it prevents the person from thinking normally, acting rationally, very often found together with delusions. the person is seriously mentally ill where it might count as a disability.

unstable, however, where someone is prone to psychiatric problems, has moodswings etc. they're not exactly the most sane person, but they aren't insane either. Aiden here, obviously falls on the unstable side. maybe just a little bit insane if you squint. this will be brought up later too, but it mixed well with his hyperactivity too.

and as we all know, our boy isn't exactly the most stable person. (sorry for the collages, but since there is a tumblr picture limit i have to keep on collaging. yes i learnt from the last time) his hyperactivity mixes with his unstable mindset which makes him incresingly vulnerable to danger- which he likes. from when the first shift happened, he's been really careless about stuff but it's been all about his love for thrill.

and it irritates Tyler, too.

the main subplot about his character is that he's a person of excitement. guess what? ADHD people like the excitement, they like new things, they like the adrenaline and thrill. now, Aiden's main characteristic of being unstable mixed with ADHD makes him an even more reckless person. another thing mixing with the hyperactivity, is boundaries.

this part will mostly be about Ashlyn since the boundary issue only happens with her.

I talked about this on Ashlyn's side on my Ashlyn analysis, now it's time for Aiden's side.

he's really annoying to her at first. Ashlyn is someone with lots of boundaries, like high walls. and who tries to climb them with his dumbass? Aiden of course.

she kept rejecting his efforts to befriend her for some time, until the night they stole the jeep. then she managed to actually bring the walls down, and accept them all into her life. but damn was she blunt.

felt that honestly

and Aiden understands her that night, too.

Ashlyn was hesistant to hug him, yes, he was aware. but she still did which made him realize she was also trying. i have to tell you, people with ADHD and people with autism either have trouble getting along, or go perfectly well. my ADHD sibling for example, I have to push them away for a lot and tell them to lower their voice. but once they remember my boundaries it actually becomes a normal, even pleasant hangout. which, Aiden realizes and tries to get along with. he tries.

seeing his efforts on her boundaries makes something click in her mind. and she starts to be a lot nicer when they hang out in the arcade.

Aiden eventually learns and remembers what she's like and what she loves to do. he already tried to watch her ballet sessions once -got slammed-, he's been to her room where he remembered the mat from and her fighting makes it obvious. I'm sure he knew he'd get cooked by betting that. but he still did,

because he knew it'd interest her. which he succeeded, he saw her smile again. the arcade day went great until Barron and his gang pulled up, but if we ignore that part it all went well. Aiden started to understand and respect her boundaries.

anyways then Tyler fucking dies

he knows that Ashlyn feels guilty. Aiden wants to comfort her through it, but also do it correctly. without going over any boundaries. which makes him really,

really,

really surprised when she responds.

also including this pannel cause its hilarious

here we see that he's still trying. hell, I'm sure he spent minutes thinking if he should come close physically to help her. that's probably why he just nudged her softly before anything else. he's not used to it, he has to conciously make an effort to not cross said boundaries. keeping his voice lower, try to not be so reckless, not doing anything physically close unless she reciprocates. wow how i wish another someone i knew irl tried that hard instead of blaming it on me cOUGH COUGH COUGH

also other small things to include

he's yapping a lot

he has a comically large amount of puzzles in his backpack for one single trip

and sticks his head into lamps for some reason

but that's just Aiden and his little neurodivergent brain for ya.

now the part I wanted to get to the most.

Borderline Personality Disorder.

first, what is Borderline Personality Disorder?

shortened as BPD, borderline is when someone's mood is inconsistent and swinging. think of it's name; the person's mental state is in the border, in the border line, switching up fastly. the most easily understood and common type is when the person goes from a depression to a happy state. but no matter which state they are in and/or go to, one thing stays the same: it is unstable.

one thing about borderline is that it is frequently mixed with bipolar. however bipolar is a neurodivengercy which means it is what someone is born with and cannot be changed. but borderline is obtained later in life. it usually happens with depression. bipolar is much more random and the episodes last longer in comparison. it may last up to hours, and the person's memory might have trouble remembering their episodes. borderline, on the other hand, is a short-lived mood swing.

now here. here's the catch; people with BPD during mood swings can have reckless behaviour, suicidal thoughts -in his case as far as we know, lowered sense of protecting himself- or a loss of understanding danger. sounds familiar?

borderline's recklessness and dangerousness, sometimes self-destructive acts combines with ADHD's love for thrill and excitement, combined with Aiden's own personality all make up for a great condition of instability.

Aiden's behaviour constantly goes crazy, I think his most frequent mood swing might be his normal self (at least, as normal as he could be) to this more maniac way of acting. I noticed it from his eyes, when he's in a more calm-ish normal state his pupils are a bit more dilated. in the pictures above, you can clearly see that he's still in the episode; filled with the adrenaline, the unstable way of thinking.

but, what causes that? surely a mental illness such as borderline doesn't happen on it's own.

right?

cause it didn't.

it never works that way.

but it can get better.

eventually.

but what happened to him?

personally, as much as a large amounnt of people seems to believe it's something like family abuse I don't think so. maybe neglect, maybe withdrawal, maybe maybe. but we've seen his parents. I don't think they would hurt him like that. I can't put any more pictures, but this is the last part anyway. his parents seem to be kind and gentle, despite that picture in his house. I'm thinking the picture was only for the dramatic effect. his parents said that he used to be really calm and quiet during Lily's birthday, and both Aiden and Ben seem comfortable around them. they were happy taking Ben in too, any kind of abusive parent wouldn't do that at least that's what I believe. also there is that Aiden got serious and concerned when he learnt that their parents were also in the facility, most likely worried for his own as you would have thought.

there was a post that I've been trying to find for like half an hour, I commented on it but I can't find the post now. the person talked about their own theory. if I remember correctly it was that when Aiden was depressive as a child, his parents took him to a thrilling activity like the ones he's been talking about (bungee-jumping, skydiving etc.) and the thrill made him actually get excited. which is why his parents allowed him to go even more reckless, because they are aware of how prone their son could be to the depression.

what happened? let's ignore the parents factor. someone can have a loving family and still be traumatized, someone can be taken care of and still feel abandoned, someone can never have confronted a situation they are terrified of.

one of my theories is that, the loneliness. it must get to a child heavily considering children need to not be left alone, but Aiden was. he didn't have any actual friends since they always moved from one place to another from his parents' business, and they might have not had enough time to make for him (which I believe is bullshitting, every child deserves to be taken some time out for. some people quit their jobs entirely for their child.) and be unaware, and that doesn't change that he was still depressed and alone. his depressive state was seemingly before Ben was taken in. now here one thing with borderline, at least from my experience, is faking actions. smiles, laughs, friendships, conversations... almost as if there's two different lives; one fake, and one real. you keep on switching, you keep on swinging between the sides where you're yourself and where you're just mimicking 'normal human behaviour'.

it starts from faking a happy state during their depression, and by time you're faking it it becomes an automatic adition to your personality. to your mind. once it furthers, it becomes the disorder. Aiden we see is always smiling. it becomes a habit that only breaks sometimes. now, I'm not saying his smile is fake- I think his face is literally just stuck like that. it breaks ever so slightly sometimes. fake it till ya make it yanno? that kind of thing. and when he swings from his calm mood to his borderline-d mood, his pupils get small and his smile gets worse. noticably worse. I'll be rereading the series (AGAIN) and this time look at all the small details since Red loves putting them and I love theorizing so

which, wraps up the Aiden thing! im actually really proud of how i could put my thoughts into text which i never could. i'd love any additions because i love other opinions as well.

and you know what? im glad Ash and Ai are out of the place because the rest are what I'm actually looking forward to >:)

...and i should sleep. really.

(wow sorry yall i finished this hours ago and said 'alright reread to make sure its good before sleep' and fell asleep through it lol sorry for 4 hour delay ig)

(leaving for school rn see yall 8 hours later 🫡)

[canonkiller]

the way you illustrate the frustration and pain of disability issues mixed with suggestive posing is so damn good.

I'm honored!! and I'm glad it stands out I have many thoughts on the subject. repression and voyeurism and Being A Spectacle To Others etc etc

(explanation mode activated) talk of sex ahead but I'm not writing porn here. you get it

one of my personal passion subjects is the intersection of sex / sexual identity and disability because like. Obviously disabled LGBT people exist. But there's so little shown of even straight, cis disabled sexuality that it's hard as fuck to find, and it gets tied up in fetishization discourse a lot¹ AND people who are not disabled² feel like they're overstepping making anything but the Good Representation (if they care about representing disability at all) and I kind of lost my train of thought but the long and short of it is that the people depicting sexual attraction to disabled people, and disabled people being sexual at all, are a very very slim part of the artistic population. Which SUCKS because I feel it shows away from a very important and pervasive issue which is the sanitization of disabled people and their experiences - a refusal to acknowledge them as people capable of desire, intimacy, complicated emotions, agency, etc etc, anything beyond the transformation into a Burden On Society and various related grievances - and in turn the alienation disabled people feel from their peers and often themselves when their experiences are innately seen as strange or taboo because they, in being disabled, have ceased to be an equal. It's a very complicated subject and I'm sure I've done a very glossed over summary of it here, and I know I'm only one of many voices on the subject, but man. I think a lot about how my only exposure to a disabled person being desired was, for a long time, a fucking accessible parking spot PSA that was shown to me because it was funny. Much to consider.

And all of this also applies double to being old and disabled. Like actually elderly old. The idea that you can no longer desire or be desired after a certain age is both stupid and Very Stupid, and the fact it's considered gross or shameful to even consider it a possibility is just another sweeping dehumanization. Basically I think if you're against the Capitalism Grindset™ I think you have to make sure you're also rethinking your biases against people who, because of the Capitalism Grindset™, have been categorized as unnecessary to recognize as people, but that's a WHOLE other can of worms

¹ a conflict that I, personally, don't care much about - I don't need to know Why a stranger thinks a body like mine is hot unless they intend to not be strangers for much longer, y'know? That's not my business

² or are, but refuse to admit they are because they Aren't Bad Enough, I see you doing that, get the assistive device you keep wishing you had, it's fine, I promise

[abyssalzones]

What's your comic writing process like? I'm starting to get into making my own comics and I really admire your work!!! Any advice?

Ah, intrepid traveler, you've done well to journey to this secluded mountaintop spire, in search of the answers you seek. I indeed can provide such forbidden comicmancy knowledge... at the cost of your mortal soul...

coughs. anyway, I'm going to warn you immediately that what works for me does not work for everyone else, and in my experience the way I do things can prove very slow and discouraging for anyone who is more interested in the actual "drawing the damn comic" part of the process. I only do it this way because I enjoy weaving a narrative web that feels not only fully contained but re-readable, but my projects are often so long and my memory so shitty that I can't just keep all of it in my head! It would spill all over the place and make a really embarrassing mess of brain-juice. Not ideal.

but as for my own process, uhh... I suppose a comic would be fitting, right?

a little choppy but you get the idea.

as for turning words into art, I've been experimenting with figuring out the best way to do that for a little while now. Originally what I was doing for something like Ad Astra Per Aspera was to take my "script" and sketch it out on paper very loosely, before transposing that onto my canvas and working from there:

...but, I've found that can make it kind of difficult to space everything around on your standard page-size, and the thing I'm having the most problems with currently seems to be finding the sweet spot of panel-size proportions. So, I've taken to printing out standard thumbnail templates (you can just find these on google) and sketching very tiny panels in those, which seems to give me a slightly better sense of scale... (mild chapter 5 spoilers, sorry ad astra fans)

but I have yet to totally pull through on this, so who knows, maybe I'll try something else in the future!

As for advice, this is probably most applicable to me, but as a disabled artist I have a very hard time managing my workload without literally working myself into injury. I don't think I talked about this publicly but when I was working on that ten year anniversary comic I was literally drawing every single day for 3 solid months. Sometimes, in my case, I really can't bring myself to stop once I've latched onto an idea, and sometimes I find the most rewarding thing I can do with my time is to draw- but I seriously cannot overstate: Do not fucking do this.

You will fuck up your wrist, your back, your neck, your eyes, and probably your mental health. It's a well-known fact that mangaka have a lower life expectancy than the average japanese person due to the intense workload imposed on them by deadlines and personal expectations. Comics are a very demanding artform, and even though I'm not on any sort of mandated schedule there are times where I've toiled away at something when I likely should have been exercising or taking vision-breaks. Therefore the best advice I can give you is to chill the hell out.

Namely, find parts of the process you can be lazy about, and embrace the laziness! You don't like digitally sketching? Don't do it! Skip it, or maybe find a way to traditionally sketch things out in advance like I do. Hate lineart? Don't fucking do it. You really don't feel like wasting your time writing 72k words of comic scripts? ...then, don't be like me. skip that part. I'm a flawed human being and what works for me might not work for you.

The second most important piece of advice I could give is to read comics. Of all kinds. The reason for this is pretty self explanatory: In order to figure out your own comic-making style, you should first pick out bits and pieces from the artist's buffet to add to your plate. Manga, graphic novels, american comics, european comics, weird niche little webcomics, funny papers, anything and everything. This advice rings true of pretty much any art form, but I find it to be essential to honing comic-making skills because so many things you feel will just come intuitively often don't. and that's okay! nobody is born knowing how to leave space for speech bubbles or shape their panels in a way that imitates stretches of time. The best way to figure out stuff like this, in my experience, is to study the "masters", and then after becoming well accustomed to the basics, figure out what rules you want to bend or break to create your own style.

I consider myself to be in equal parts a writer and an artist, which lends itself well to making narrative comics, but maybe you're a bit more of an artist and want to focus on panel-by-panel visual storytelling. Or, conversely, maybe your talents lean closer towards writing, and the art itself is more of a secondary skill. Regardless of your unique blend of talents you can and should make a comic, you should just also be aware of your strengths and try to hone in on those- there will always be opportunities to build up skills you lack, but focusing on what you do best will always lead you in the right direction.

Anyway, that being said, here are some recommendations in no particular order:

Monster, Naoki Urasawa (!!)

Bone, Jeff Smith

Witch Hat Atelier, Kamome Shirahama

The first IDW run of Transformers comics (namely More Than Meets the Eye and Lost Light)

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (!!)

Through the Woods, Emily Carroll (really any Emily Carroll comics)

Kill Six Billion Demons (webcomic) (!!)

Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo

The Third Person, Emma Grove

Tintin, Hergé (can be super racist please be wary)

Dungeon Meshi, Ryoko Kui

Calvin & Hobbes, Bill Watterson

Maus, Art Spiegelman

Cucumber Quest (webcomic)

Jellyfish Princess, Akiko Higashimura

Golden Kamuy, Satoru Noda (!!)

Note that I did not grow up with manga so I am seriously behind on a lot of extremely influential japanese comics such as Dragon Ball, One Piece, basically any of the original Shonen Jump comics, but they're widely considered building blocks of the genre so if you love the artform I think you should give them a try! Same goes for classic non-shonen manga genres like various Shoujo, Josei, Yuri, Gekiga, ETC.

same as above applies to a lot of classic DC and Marvel works, I unfortunately am just not a big fan of superhero comics... but I'm sure there's good stuff in there. a couple of my mutuals talk about booster gold and the blue beetle all the time so I'm assuming there has to be something worthwhile.

...and many, many, many more that I'm forgetting! I noticed as I made this list that, to my knowledge, hardly any of these are made by black or just non-japanese-mangaka BIPOC artists, which makes me sad about the gaps in my own comic collection. Therefore, anyone is welcome to add their own recommendations in the replies!

now go forth, and combine images with text!!!!!!!!!!!

[badass-queer-couples-battle]

Don't you think it's funny cause actual canon gay characters in BL manga will say "I love you" but only the shounen bromance can spew out some of the most romantic shit akin to a 19th century poet writing a letter expressing his surpressed love for his lover 😭.....

Genuniely can't tell if it's bait or not, but I'm going to treat this ask seriously anyway.

Here, have some examples of beautiful and poetic expressions of love in BL media!

I'm going to start with my favourite murder husbands, Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu from Word of Honor/Faraway Wanderers!

This happens in episode nine, less than one third into the story- it's that early, they've known each other for like a week and are already able to tell they're meant to be. They've made their decision to be together, and over the course of the story:

They defend each other multiple times and fight side by side in multiple episodes, sometimes protecting their adopted kid/mentee Chengling as well

Zhou Zishu is willing to go against the whole martial arts society for his boyfriend. With zero hesistation, might I add.

They both know the other has done horrible things (lots of murder on both sides here) and that's not only okay, it's a big part of why they're soulmates and get each other so well!

Zhou Zishu is slowly dying (poisoned nails in his chest, long story) and Wen Kexing can and will risk his life to save him. Don't worry, they get a happy ending both in the show and the novel even if the show's last episode is behind a paywall and Netflix didn't even include it for some reason?

But enough about them, let's move on to the immortal fantasy genre boyfriends Hua Cheng and Xie Lian from Heaven Official's Blessing!

Please note how Hua Cheng is ready to accept Xie Lian in whatever state he's currently in- as a god, a fallen outcast, even grieving and angry and at his absolute lowest. He's stood by Xie Lian in his worst moments, even if at the time Xie Lian had no idea it was him.

Hua Cheng has loved Xie Lian for 800 years, ever since he was a boy Xie Lian saved from falling to his death during a procession.

Xie Lian became a god, then fell due to horrible circumstances, almost committed a war crime against another nation that destroyed his country, spend 800 years wandering the mortal realm as a poor cultivator with his powers greatly reduced, and eventually ascended to become a god again. Throughout it all, Hua Cheng loved him and did his best to help him and then find him.

They're both adorable and the definition of a power couple once they're reunited- no spoilers, but they eventually fight an incredibly powerful god side by side and win & the last scene in the story is them reuniting for good since there's no more obstacles to their immortal love.

Let's move on to my favourite Japanese BL, Our Dining Table (also available as a series that came out semi-recently, but the examples below are from the manga.)

Yutaka is a lonely salesman who meets Minoru, a restaurant worker and his much younger brother Tane grieving the death of their mother.

Yutaka and Minoru hit it off by bonding through food they cook and share. The series is incredibly heartwarming, and as seen above Yutaka becomes a much happier person thanks to both his new relationship and big brother-like bond with little Tane.

As a little bonus, the whole found family together!

This post can't be complete without Golden Stage (or Golden Terrace, as the English official translation calls it).

Fu Shen and Yan Xiaohan aren't even in love at this point! This is at the beginning of the story, when their marriage has just been arranged by the emperor and they're still bitter rivals.

Yan Xiaohan is already protective of his future husband- later on, he also builds him a mansion meant to accommodate his disability (nerve damage in both legs, which requires a wheelchair and/or crutches). They're both incredibly powerful military generals, and the emperor was an idiot thinking an arranged marriage would humiliate them.

Of course they fall in love, of course they're a power couple, of course they send each other letters through trained geese when they're separated during the war, of course they run to each other as fast as they can across a wide cold river when they're finally reunited! Of course they're important to me!

....Aaand how about some Wangxian to wrap up this post? They need no introduction, an absolutely wonderful and complex relationship in a complex fantasy/intrigue story available in several forms - the books, the animated series (as seen above), the live action series, the audio drama, there's so much!

Some of their most beautiful moments:

Lan Wangji writing a song for Wei Wuxian and naming it Wangxian. Years after it's composed, Wei Wuxian plays it and LWJ is able to recognise him even in a different body.

LWJ begs WWX to come with him to Cloud Recesses, to safety, after WWX makes himself an enemy of the whole cultivation world for protecting innocent people.

They confront the final villain together, and work together to expose his crimes. This is also when their final love confession happens, and it's hilarious- in front of everyone's salad, WWX declares he also wanted to sleep with LWJ.

Despite censorship, the animated series was still able to allude to their wedding, showing them in red wedding robes (unfortunately can't find a gif rn)

Respectfully, if you genuinely think BL doesn't have beautiful love confessions and displays of romance, you need to find better BL.

[urinarythreatinfection]

Aight bet-

Can i get Shanks paired with a female reader (romatically) who is also missing an arm and/or has red hair.

Thank you v.v

Not my bestest work but I thought it was funny and warm.

Narcissistic Romance

Shanks x Fem!Reader. Reader has red hair and missing arm. Miku is Miku even if she looks different so skin color or hair texture can be anything else. Small angst(?) but mostly fluff. Drabble + Headcanons

“I get we have the same hair and stump but did you really need to go this far? You even drew the scar on me.” You touch your eye where some friends had drawn Shanks’s signature scar on.

“This fits so well! You might as well be his female form.” You’re all near a bar, one of your friends got the idea to dress you up as Red Haired Shanks after getting drunk. “Strike a pose or somethin-” They’re interrupted when yelling is heard.

“C-CAPTAIN!?” You hear from behind you, turning to see a group of men staring at you.

‘Captain?’ You think to yourself, confused before it clicks. These must be Red Hair Pirates, but how? This is a crazy coincidence that they’re here right as you’re dressed up. Your mind runs at a million miles a second and you clamp a hand over your friend’s mouth before they speak. “Well, I got caught by a devil fruit. Changed my looks a bit but I look good as a woman too, right?” You smirk, going along with it. Unfortunately, your cover is blown almost immediately when a head peeks over your shoulder to look at you.

“Hmm. I do look good as a woman, don’t I?” It’s Red Haired Shanks, another coincidence and you jolt with a yelp. “Freaking out, Miss Red Hair? Not very Emperor-like.” He teases with a grin. Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to go with the joke considering how quickly you got caught, and by the man himself. “What’s my female doppelganger doing here?” He looks at your friends with a wink, this is so embarrassing. “Popular as a woman too?”

That was how the two of you met, a funny cosplay of a funny guy.

You were scared at first you were going to get in trouble for impersonating him, even if it was a joke and you were caught immediately.

Shanks isn’t a sore sport though and he actually found it really funny.

He had stayed at the island and you were good company, proving to be a good fighter as well.

He couldn’t just leave an attractive and strong woman alone, right?

You ended up joining his crew along with a few of your other friends that could fight and wanted to go, the rest you all sending letters to any others often.

The official number of redheads in the Red Hair Pirates is now two.

The two of you two hit it off, cracking similar arm jokes and having fun together, it was perfect.

It really wasn’t long until you both ended up dating, then came new jokes.

“Narcissist.” That’s what people like to tease you both about.

Dating a person that can look like a genderbent version of you with the right clothes and makeup is definitely narcissistic.

Of course, you both take it with pride.

Shanks even likes to show you off, calling himself the luckiest man ever to find the most beautiful woman ever to play into the narcissist joke.

Something on a more personal level is that the two of you can relate to missing an arm, helping each other with phantom pain and insecurities.

After all, when the person you love has the same imperfection as you it’s hard to be insecure about it.

You’re perfect to him and him to you, despite your disabilities.

It’s nice to have someone that understands, that knows how hard it is to deal with losing a limb.

When you’re feeling insecure sometimes Shanks puts his stump on yours, smiling and calling you both “stump buddies” before kissing you.

If the weather is bad and you’re both struggling with pains you can hold each other, finding comfort in the warmth of your lover.

Shanks holds you tight, even if he’s clenching his jaw, always trying to put your pain above his no matter how much you try and tell him he matters too.

It makes you feel insecure, he should have a partner that would be able to help him without struggling themselves, but to him you’re everything.

He’d rather hold you while shaking from pain himself than be comforted by anyone else.

These bad moments with you are more precious to him than the best with anyone else.

[utilitycaster]

What do you think the target demographic was for the Laudna book? A lot of what i heard is that it reads like competent fanfiction, which imo is not a good thing for an official book

lmao "competent" not so much. I mean I've read worse, but I've also read infinitely better fanfiction.

This is the crux of what I want to write about as longer meta but I think Campaign 3, and particularly Imogen and Laudna both as individuals and as a relationship happen to have a specific appeal to the sort of person who is utterly enamored with the idea of helpless victims of circumstance because they believe those people can't ever be criticized, whether it's on the basis of their identity (gender, sexuality, age, race, disability, etc) or on the basis of what they've endured (abuse, discrimination, etc). I think this book probably unintentionally panders to precisely that demographic: people who just want to hear how sad and hard Laudna's life was and how you can't be mean to her because she was confused and didn't know what was happening and was lonely. Which is funny, because a rare highlight in the book is when the old woman in Kymal says "Intent is one thing. Actions are another...You might not have meant to hurt her. But you did," and disregards all of Laudna's arguments and will not move, and is portrayed as pretty reasonable, all things considered.

Also like...the writing style can best be described as something your teacher would write "very vivid" on if you were a high school underclassman and you were learning about Edgar Allen Poe and were tasked to write your own gothic horror story, but then when you find that paper when you're cleaning out your childhood room in your early 20s you full body shudder at how overwrought and clumsy it is. Like, this reads like the work of an above-average 14 year old in the clutches of an emo phase, and would probably appeal to those of that age and that proclivity.

[holdupjack]

Don't Make Eye Contact

——————

Pairing: Hermione Granger x Fem!Reader

AU: Reader is a Ravenclaw/No War/No Voldemort

WARNING: None

——————

Third Person P.O.V:

7th Year

Y/n sat at a table in the Gryffindor Common Room with her long-time friend, Hermione Granger.

She had agreed to help Y/n with her potions test coming up, only after she had begged her repeatedly. They two had been very good friends since the first year, some said it was a match made in heaven due to their personalities.

It's their last year now, during their many days together Y/n found herself...would crushing be the right word? Let's just say she had been infatuated with the Muggle-born.

Many people were though, and it was quite obvious there was a secret Hermione Fan Club somewhere in the school.

Surprisingly, Y/n hadn't been asked to join yet. Almost all of their immediate friends knew about Y/n's attraction, and they teased her relentlessly for it. Even if they did think it was charming.

"Y/n?" Hermione calls out, noticing the deep focus she has on the wooden table. Y/n's sight shifted almost immediately to meet her gaze, her stare looked as though she had seen a ghost.

"Yes?" Y/n replies as she clears her throat, her fingernail picking at the sides of her book in her lap.

"Are you alright?" Hermione asks as she shifts in her seat and leans forward slightly, noticing a group of students walking down into the Common Room.

"I'm fine! Just going through some stuff...you know how it is" Y/n hums, trying to play off the fact that she had been embarrassingly daydreaming about her. Quickly she looked back at her book, now realizing that her eyes began to sting at the fact she would look at what she truly wanted to admire.

Y/n didn't notice as Hermione began to smile at her anxious form as the group crawled out of the Gryffindor Common Room. Her book was gently placed next to her, and her chin found a seat in her palm as she held up her head.

(A/N: Btw, it must suck to be physically disabled in Gryffindor. Imagine someone in a wheelchair trying to get through that tunnel. Do you think the teachers cast something on it so it'll be easier for them to get to and from?... Anyways-)

"If you don't mind me prying, but what are you going through?" She asked as her other arm rested behind her elbow and gently played with the fabric around her bicep.

"It's nothing 'Mione, I swear," Y/n replies while not looking up from her book. Hermione raised an eyebrow and hummed in discontent at her answer.

"You've been stand-offish since December, has this got to do with Valentine's Day?" she asks and Y/n blinks at her unregistered book page, trying to figure out how the bloody hell she got that logic from.

Granted she was right, but that wasn't the point. How did she get to that conclusion with nothing but Y/n being anxious? She's always anxious!

"How did you come up with that idea?" Y/n asks as she flips to the next page in her book, even though she didn't comprehend what it said before.

"It's quite simple really" Hermione states as she leans back in her chair, folds her arms, and crosses one leg over the other.

"Yeah?" Y/n hums as her legs start to bob up and down in a nervous rhythm.

"It started after Ron had been poking at you about asking someone out before Christmas break. Him then saying that you not having your first kiss already was funny, which I disagree with, but I know you took it personally." Hermione continued as she watched the other girl intently, noting every little flicker of emotion that crossed her face.

"Now Valentine's Day is two weeks away and you're trying to find the courage to ask out who you like" Hermione tempts as she 'accidentally' nudged Y/n's leg with her foot.

Oh, you thought Hermione was oblivious to Y/n's attraction? Ha, that's funny. Hermione Granger? Oblivious?

Well...sometimes, but not when it comes to Y/n. She had that girl mapped out better than the Dark Forest.

The hair on Y/n's neck stood up at attention as the side of the girl's shoe grazed her calf and disappeared. The shaking of her leg immediately stopped.

"So, what's your plan?" she asks, chuckling slightly at the soft shade of maroon enveloping her cheeks.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. I'm happy dying alone." Y/n responds in a monotone voice, to which Hermione rolls her eyes.

"He made fun of you too, just in case you forgot. What was it again? The fact that you haven't dated anyone since fifth year?" Y/n teases back, turning a page again when she feels like enough time has gone by.

"Whatever, I'm waiting for them to ask me out anyways," she replies, to which Y/n snorts and flicks her sight at the Gryffindor's hands, before retreating to the book.

"You're waiting? Do you think that sending ESP confirmation is going to get them to ask you on a date?" Y/n chuckles as she thinks about Hermione trying to telepathically tell her interest she's ready to be wooed.

"It worked with Krum" Hermione replies with a soft smile as she waits for their eyes to meet, but Y/n still keeps them away from her sight.

"Oh yeah, great example" Y/n mutters in playfulness, as she rests her book on the table and stretches over the backrest of her chair.

Her eyes squeezed shut as she let out a closed-mouth sigh, her back cracking in multiple places as she bent against the wood.

"Alright, why don't you ask out who you like then? There can't be people elbowing past you with better chances." Hermione asked as she shifted in her seat again, trying to catch Y/n's gaze but again, she ignored her.

"It's called fear of rejection 'Mione, it weakens even the best of soldiers" Y/n states a student crawls into the Common Room and greets the two of them with a quick 'hello'.

Y/n looks up at them and smiles, just as quickly replying as they scurried up to their dorm room. Hermione ignored them, not to be a bitch, but to try to get ahold of her love life came first at this moment.

"I know that, but I've seen you ask things that you have no business asking. Like when you saw that McGonagall had a bottle of Fire Whiskey in her desk and asked her for a swig" Hermione states as she uncrossed her legs and sat up, now slightly annoyed that Y/n has yet to look back at her.

"That's different! That couldn't ruin friendships, this could." Y/n states as she looks back at her book, she now getting slightly bothered by all the questions.

"Fine, then what would you say to them if you didn't have this fear of rejection?" Hermione questions as she leans her arms onto the table. Y/n sighs with slight exhaustion and caves into the girl's request.

"You want to know what I would say? Fine. Here is what I would say. I would say that she's the most soul-giving person I've ever met. She makes me so nervous that I'm scared to look at her most days. That I've loved her freely at night and whispered everything I find great about her to the man on the moon. I would tell her that I don't care about status, that to me, she is better than ever Pureblood girl in this world. I would tell her that I...I love her." Y/n finishes her rant quietly as she just stares at her book page with annoyance.

It was quiet for a moment before Y/n asked Hermione the same question.

"So, what would you say? You know, after they finally heard your ESP call to action" Y/n asks with a small chuckle as she tries to ease the tension, and her racing heart.

Hermione was still quiet, her eyes soft and unwavering as she stared at Y/n. She wondered what she could say that was just as beautiful, maybe something straight to the point.

"What would I say? I would say...I love you too Y/n."

Y/n felt her throat close and her eyes widened in horror at the realization that Hermione knew. She has known for a while.

Every smile and chuckle from Hermione started to seem insincere in Y/n's mind. What if this was some game to her? Y/n was afraid to know the truth, whether it was good or bad. As long as she didn't look into those oak tree eyes, she'd been able to get out of there.

"Look at me Y/n" Hermione whispered as if she could hear her thoughts, but Y/n just stood up and packed her bag quickly, much to the Gryffindor's dismay.

"I have to go"

"Y/n-"

"I'll talk to you later"

Y/n was out of that Common Room faster than an Army grunt under barbed wire. She was even quicker to escape the Gryffindor Tower and make her way to Central Hall.

Hermione cursed and smacked the table with the side of her hand as she leaned back into her chair.

Why didn't she believe her? Why didn't she just look at her and see that she wasn't pulling one over on her? Why is she infatuated with someone so stubborn?

She sat at that table for ten minutes. Her eyes fixated on the tunnel as she thought through her feelings before she went after her and said the wrong thing.

"I'm not going to let you just ignore this" Hermione mumbled to herself as she quickly got up, leaving her things at the table with no care as to what happens to them.

Y/n sat at the fountain in the Central Hall, her breath uneven from the jog there, and the realization that Hermione had known all about this.

She should have stayed. It was too late to go back now, she'd already made a complete fool of herself by storming out like that.

The Central Hall was vacant, most people at at the Quidditch game, or getting high in their dorms while the Prefects were out.

"I'm such an idiot" Y/n groans to herself as she lets her belongings flop onto the ground. Her hand slipped through her hair out of frustration as a sigh left her lips.

Y/n sat and stared at her feet for a while, so long in fact that she didn't hear the approaching footsteps behind her due to the fountains running water.

Hermione smiled as soon as she got a glimpse of Y/n's face, slowly sitting beside her till she noticed her presence.

Of course, Y/n knew it was her even without looking over. The smell of Cinnamon and Parchment invaded her nose as soon as she sat down.

"I'll ask you again, Please look at me" Hermione whispers as she waits patiently for Y/n to respond.

Finally, their eyes met again. Hermione couldn't hold back the smile on her face as the soft hue of a cardinal matched each other's cheeks.

Y/n swallowed the lump in her throat as the woman she'd chained her heart to began to speak.

"Now, would you stop being so stubborn and ask me on a date already? I think I have waited long enough" Hermione asks with a playful smirk on her face. Y/n chuckled softly and looked back out in front of her.

"I don't know, I still have my eyes on Lavender too" Y/n teased, now feeling a little bolder than before. Hermione always had that effect on her, somehow making an uncomfortable situation into a powerful one.

"Oh sweet Merlin, don't even joke about that" Hermione groaned, still a little upset that she lost Ron to her. Hey, she didn't like him anymore, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have a bruised ego about it.

Y/n began to quietly snicker as Hermione moved closer to her, their shoulders leaning against one another's as her arm crossed Y/n's back and rested in the space between her hip and arm.

When she looked back at Hermione, their noses brushed like a soft spring wind. A smile played on the Gryffindor's lips as she stared into Y/n's eyes.

"You know, usually you initiate a kiss after a date" Y/n whispers as her eyes flickered to Hermione's lips multiple times.

"Call me eager" Hermione whispers back as she blinks becoming slow, and full of want.

"Do you do this to all of your admirers?" Y/n asks as her eyebrow rises with question. Hermione scoffed at her accusation and grinned.

"Those were men, but with you? My self-respect goes out the window." Hermione hums as Y/n lets out a chuckle of her own. Now eyeing the young woman a teasing stare as their lips ghost each other's.

"How charming Hermione, is that what you say with every fan girl?" Y/n asks as the Gryffindor kisses the side her her mouth, before begrudgingly holding herself back from invading your space more than she already has.

"So you are a fan girl? Oh, you stoke the embers of my fantasies with this knowledge" Hermione whispers as they hear the clamoring of feet and overlapping voices heading their way, the game must be over.

The brown-haired beauty sighed softly and backed away as hundreds of students walked in and past through different areas. They could hear the small orchestra nearby start playing again.

Their moment alone was now taken away, and only the tingling of that small peck was left between them.

"Y/n, why have you averted your gaze from mine again?" Hermione asks, and Y/n now realizes she is back to looking at the ground.

Even though the space between them was quiet, the roaring of laughter and yelling got on Hermione's nerves.

"Come, let us go somewhere more private" Hermione stated as she stood up and grabbed her things from the floor. Y/n knew protesting was futile.

Hermione wanted her, Y/n knew that now, and it didn't take a genius to know she wasn't backing away from a few 'what ifs' in her mind like Y/n does.

Harry watched with Luna from a staircase nearby, both looking at one another with a knowing glance before chuckling at one another.

"You know, Hermione hates when Y/n does that" Luna starts as they watch the future couple disappear into the crowd. Harry cocked an eyebrow at the blonde as they sat down on the stairs.

"Does what?" He asks as Luna's eyes shift around the ceiling dreamily, they hold so much wisdom behind them.

"Hermione desires Y/n's full attention, and the poor Ravenclaw gets so nervous around her that she tries her best to keep her gaze off of her," Luna explains and Harry hummed at the answer, now quite surprised to know that Hermione liked eyes on her.

"That does not mean she likes other people's gaze upon her face or body. Isn't that poetically beautiful? She has yearned for Y/n's sole focus, and has displayed daggers to any who try to compete." Luna hums and Harry has to scoff at the 'deeper' meaning of this courtship.

"Luna, I think you're putting too much credit on to Hermione. She had only started pinning for Y/n in the fifth year, Y/n has loved her most of their time together." Harry states. As much as he loved Hermione, she got blindsided by Krum and Ron for a short time. It was Y/n who always gazed upon her with admiration and zealousness.

"Maybe I am, but isn't it better to be late than to never have arrived?" Luna replies as the boy nodded in agreement.

As they talked away in Central Hall, somewhere near the Ravenclaw Tower, Hermione relished in Y/n's stare after a small meaningful talk in an empty corridor.

Quiet chuckles and kisses were shared between them as they spent the remaining hours together. Hermione had long forgotten her duty of tutoring her new lover, which she did regret when Y/n flunked it, but it wasn't her fault!

Y/n had a glimmer behind her eyes that made Hermione's head foggy and her heart thump like a rabbit's foot, making her feel as though she was the only girl in the world.

(A/N: Cue Rihanna 💃)

Later that night, Luna had poked at Y/n about what she saw in the Ravenclaw Common Room. Saying that she hoped for the best, and wished nothing but good fortune on their journey of life together.

Y/n cleared her throat and flushed as bright as a firetruck. She responded with a soft 'thank you' but soon said that Luna acted as if they were getting married.

"Might as well celebrate something that will definitely to come true"

"You can weave your predictions into the air, but that doesn't make them concrete" Y/n responded with a small chuckle.

The blonde just smiled and walked away, deciding that she would accept her 'you were right' in a few years.

[ritrox]

I would like to make it clear: I am the artist behind @signfromeywa and I have NOTHING to do with Nattikay!

I have never ever written to, or with this person!

Furthermore, I have never been contacted and informed about the situation. So I really didn't know what was going on.

I would like to distance myself once again from Nattikay! I do not stand behind her statements and find them highly unacceptable!

Me and my blog is a safe space for EVERY person! There is no place for hate on my blog! No one is being discriminated because of their skin color, origin, religion or sexuality!

I stand up for minorities and am there for them.

I created Ayluna with the idea that she has more human DNA than the normal avatars and that she has a disability as a result. She has a disability due to the dominant human DNA. I wanted to portray the struggle with a disability with this character because I myself suffer greatly from my chronic illness and my disability! I wanted to spread awareness about it. She still has blue stripes and some blue pigments in her skin! She is not an albino, I see her as a very human hybrid. You can read more about her story and idea below. I'll link you something. Since there are also white snow Na'vi, I thought the concept of ayluna would be okay. She was in no way created out of racist ideas!

After everything I have written, I would like to make it clear once again that I have nothing to do with this and I have blocked Nattikay on the spot!

In the future I would like people to approach me directly and discuss problems with me instead of accusing me of something so serious!

----

Also, the hashtags under the post (mentiont above from @nessa-harp) and the post in general were an attempt to be funny on my part. I wasn't trying to spread hate or argue with anyone. I thought it was funny. I have already removed the hashtags!

Everything I wrote was a tribute to @nin3kyuu's post and I did no have ill intensions just a bad sense of humor :/

[theconcealedweapon]

"If someone doesn't like you, there must be something wrong with them."

Stop. I know you mean well, but this is horrible advice.

So many people like to imagine the perfect bullying victim, who's a perfect angel and is nice 100% of the time and is disliked for no good reason at all.

But unfortunately, that's not how it works. There are many ways that a bullying victim could give people a good reason to not like them.

Maybe being mistreated so frequently has caused them to be mad at the world, so they take it out on others.

Maybe they're mean to people because it's how people treat them, so they think it's normal and it doesn't register to them as mean.

Maybe they've been bullied and punished so frequently that they can't tell the difference between being bullied and being held accountable for actually doing something wrong.

Maybe they try to be funny and end up being mean.

Maybe they're hurtful toward women, people of color, disabled people, etc and don't realize it because it's normalized by society.

Maybe they do what they think is being nice but never actually listen to the people they claim to be nice to.

Maybe they have no idea how to interact with others the right way so they copy what they see on TV.

Maybe being vulnerable has caused them to be recruited by cults, such as pickup artists or neo-nazis.

Or maybe they have flaws just like everyone else.

And even if they're doing nothing wrong, no one is liked by everyone. An individual is perfectly justified in disliking someone for no reason at all, as long as they don't recruit others.

This is especially true when it involves personal boundaries. People are fully within their rights to reject someone as a sexual partner, romantic partner, or person they allow to touch them. And they're allowed to reject them for any reason, which includes being physically unattracted to them, not liking their vibe, or literally any other reason. People who are bullied frequently would definitely struggle to find these types of connections, so they definitely need advice and reassurance. But teaching someone that there's something wrong with anyone who rejects them is very dangerous.

[mistakenot4892]

Nebula devblog, July '24

Sneaking in this month's update two days before August due to Nova Lands eating an entire week of dev time and Warframe eating another 2 days. It's a hard life. This one will probably be a bit patchy or sparse as I have genuinely lost track of what was new this month due to leaving it this late. I am a highly trained and competent professional.

Nebula SS13 is an open source project based on the Baystation 12 version of Space Station 13. SS13 is a topdown multiplayer simulation game where you play the crew of a ship, station, colony, etc. depending on your fork and map, with the Nebula and Bay forks having a focus on roleplaying and simulation interactions.

Notable changes

The first phase of a major AI rewrite has gone in, separating AI behavior from mob type so human-type mobs can be given AI. This is mostly to support undead and skeletons on Pyrelight at the moment, but will be much more flexible in general going forward.

Simple wall-based windows/shutters have been added for low tech maps that need airflow and light. Penny's genius idea of having them cast a light cone towards the darker side of the shutter makes for some very aesthetic medieval interiors.

Spacefarers, a ship-based fork, has a new ship, and the painfully tricky shuttle rotation PR Penny has been working on is slowly progressing towards a mergable state. When it goes in, manual ship landing will be greatly expanded as shuttles will be able to rotate to match docking ports, instead of having to strictly dock in the same direction every time.

The atom temperature system has been disabled in several cases due to a lot of weird edge cases and bugs in the simulation. It needs more time in the oven. The disabled interactions include things like all of your blood congealing into black pudding if you stand on a stove, being able to instantly heat a beaker of beer to 5000K with a cigarette lighter, or all of your clothes melting off in a fire.

Penny has also put a bunch of work in to moving most of the 'classic' Baystation SS13 game modes into modpacks. This allows forks to pick and choose which are available, since as funny as it could have been, having high tech spacer mercenaries landing on Middle-Earth wouldn't fit the vibes.

Lots of small changes and features have been coming out of the Pyrelight fantasy map testing. Little things like honey being usable for wound disinfection, various crafting tweaks, and things like flooded turfs not putting out your lamp unless it's deeper than your waist.

Automated movement that previously relied on BYOND's inbuilt walk_to() procs now use a dedicated subsystem that calls the appropriate MayMove()/DoMove() proc chains. This essentially just means AI-driven mobs no longer completely ignore little things like pain, having working legs, or being dead or unconscious when chasing you.

Bugs of note

Trout were completely invisible because their main texture was accidentally named world-trout instead of world. This definitely impacted the trout population.

Undead on Pyrelight don't know how to pick up their weapons if they drop them, so disarming them literally or figuratively makes it turn into a slapfight.

Prosthetic limbs, like cybernetics or peglegs, were getting itchy or developing rashes. Maybe it's psychosomatic.

Simple animals like deer were dying en masse on the wilderness maps due to hail. We didn't intend for hail to be the size of hen eggs and covered in spikes, so deer and such are now unhurt by weather.

Current priorities

Personally my focus has been on getting through the Pyrelight feedback list after each test. Lots of small things come out of each test round and my limited time after my real-world job has cut into my space feature time. The Neb general issue list has been getting a bit long so I'll probably put a weekend into getting that cut down again this month.

Otherwise, I have three big PRs open waiting for me to find the focus to finish them: the floor rewrite (aiee), a wizard modpack and ability rework (needed for Pyrelight, eventually, but augh), and a bee rewrite (beewrite) to make bees and other insect nests available outside of one specific machine on space maps.

NataKillar has an amazing PR in the works that sounds quite mundane: separating liquid and solid reagents in reagent containers like beakers. However, this opens up a buttload of interesting chemical interactions down the track, not the least of which is finally getting ice cubes to not require a dedicated ice material.

[frozenjokes]

Hey, I binged read your cubscar(ian) hotguy au

And I LOVED it,

Cub's characterization is so precious, he's so autistic to me (I'm autistic so I kin heavily) the way you write him, chef's kiss and all that. Is Cub Demi? xx

Scar is so strong and yet so broken but he doesn't know it yet, I'm so glad he's in therapy now <3. I love that you wrote him this way, he's disabled (just like me) but he's not a child, he's whimsy but so life smart, I value so much when authors write him like this and his plurality is very relatable <3. And his friendship with Mumbo <3

Grian, well he's just so real, his need for a job ever tho Cub was happy looking out for him <3, his friendship just reconnecting with Mumbo so easily, warmth. I love how self aware he is, and the angst you wrote for him is heart strings shattering I loved.

Cub and Grian's relationship ahhhhh yessss. The commitment and devotion, how they are so connected they didn't notice it sliding from platonic to romantic. This just IS for me.

Cub and Scar, well (yes again 🤣) they are so sweet, and Cub holds 51% of the cards lol but Scar's 49% is really doing things for Cub wink wink. Some of the reasoning behind Cub's love is being loved. And Scar loving him because of his round edges and softness 🥹

Scar and Grian. I hope the flowers he got for them were poppies and lilacs /lh /nf; Scar's fear because of his sharp edges, Scar in other works has his weakness but he can always find in in himself to want to protect Grian almost as a superior?, but you write Scar so vulnerable and equal to Grian. They are enemies to frenemies to ... But really it's caused by the lack of knowing, eachother and their personal experiences. Again Scar and his plural view of people <3 I think Grian thought of Scar as stronger emotionally, physically, mentally then Scar ever was, and Grian used him because of this misconception. I'm glad they're getting there, truly. Did Grian feel dejected? when Scar didn't help with his wings? Angst <3

thank you!!! Cub could be Demi. So could Grian! They can be whatever your heart desires. Personally I don’t care to label any of them because it isn’t very important to me. I do think Cub would refer to both Scar and Grian has his friends even after years of being together and it drives Scar absolutely nuts. Why are you doing that. What do you Mean. Cub it’s been twenty years you can introduce me as your boyfriend I Promise no one here is going to judge you and cub just goes: ? oh right. and then he never does that. the word friend just comes easier. it’s cozy.

It’s very silly to me you pointed out scar’s friendship with Mumbo because they are not friends scar is Coping. /silly. I actually forget very often I write a lot of angst of these characters because that’s just not really how my brain categorizes turmoil. It’s always a jumpscare to see it pointed out /light hearted, joking. funniest instance of this happening 🔽

(from chapter two of the Jimmy decked out fic)

I was on call with a friend while reading this for the first time and for the life of me I Could Not think of what /nf meant and he didn’t know either so we came up with some ideas: NOT FUNNY. no fingers. non fungible. nut fart. NO FUN. no friends. Nice feet. never forget. nice flowers. new friend! NOT FAIR

it means not forced. we had to look it up LMAO /silly silly silly. thank you for the laughs

Grian thought of scar as a piece of shit self absorbed celebrity and this is true however it’s not everything. inside is a deeply, deeply, extremely deeply, unimaginably kicked puppy. he’s sad and pathetic and has big wet eyes. also he cares.

Grian wasn’t too affected by Scar’s not wanting to touch his wings, and in general the experience was a little more overwhelmingly confusing? Neither he nor Cub expected him to have such a strong reaction, especially when things between all three of them are getting better, but Scar is still carrying the weight of a lot of Grian’s poor treatment of him for weeks on end, and even though Scar’s forgiven him and understands where he was coming from, those aren’t things you can just brush off, especially when many of Grian’s gestures (good and bad) are sweeping and intense and unpredictable, and people pleasing for someone as unstable as that (less so now, but before it was bad) is Extremely Stressful. dealing with cuteguy (evil version) for months beforehand Did Not Help. there’s a reason Scar views Grian as Sharp and that’s because they have both beat the piss out of each other hundreds of times.

To a point Grian is aware of this. It’s a thing he’s discussed in therapy a thousand times, and something he had to confront directly with Jimmy. In his eyes, his friendship with Scar (despite blunders on both sides) is an act of Scar’s good will towards him as given with Scar’s forgiveness, and if Scar is having problems, then it’s not really something Grian can hold against him. Obviously that doesn’t stop feelings from being hurt, but this was more a result of The Panic Attack than the wing touching refusal. Which Grian dealt with by Pushing Minigolf Pushing Pushing Pushing Pushing. Grian’s reaction to guilt and/or rejection is I NEED TO MAKE UP FOR THIS RIGHT MEOW!!!!! and in doing so often fails miserably to read the room, which is why Cub steps in in that particular instance.

as far as wings though, if I were Grian, scar would be The Last Person I want touching them. Clumsiest motherfucker alive who in the case of this au, tends to be rougher with his affection because he literally can not tell what is too little or too much. Having someone nervous at your back probably isn’t a great feeling either, and for an activity that’s supposed to be relaxing, Cub brings a Much steadier aura. Cub also has the capacity to focus. Scar would probably need at least three other sources of stimulation to do a good job. And it would still hurt. Regular wing grooming is not supposed to hurt 💔

my rambling service comes free, well, perhaps at a small cost of a seemingly benign question. normal about her ocs frozenjokes back at it again