#but also sometimes thats just the way it is

[catmask]

also admittedly i feel very passionately about this subject because i actually stopped making more personal artworks online due to them being sexualized. all pieces about my struggles with addiction, sexual abuse, ocd and dissociation are now kept private because its too painful for people to attempt to rip at them like a piece of meat instead of sit with and attempt to understand them.

i still make art for myself, though sometimes i wonder if people are upset with me for making more cute 'shallow' art instead of sharing all of what i make.

in a way this is just another defense tactic - to 'mascotify' myself, to wear a cute costume as a way to protect the parts of my identity im not comfortable sharing and watching other people go 'me and who' to.

i recognize i cannot control the way that others engage with my art. if i did try to do that, id be brushed off as erratic, angry or hysterical. so instead of fight it i choose to lean into it instead. ill be a marketable plushie if thats what the world would have of me. ill keep my vulnerabilities safe inside

[softness-and-shattering]

Thats a good point, I see all kinds of neurodivergence in my family but only a couple of us in my generation, afaik, have a diagnosis.

However, my gp attended a recent talk about overlap of queer folk with neurodivergence and also a group of comorbid illnesses including, iirc, POTS/MCAS/EDS/CFS theres a couple others Im just blanking. Digestive issues? Things that we've broadly noticed as a community, and it seems like its starting to be studied.

And also, everyone has some kind of trauma, idk how many people if any have no kind of disability whatsoever, humanity is vast and diverse. And we're wired to look for patterns. Interpret this information how you will, I certainly cant say for sure if these patterns are broader than trans people, or are more people trans than we expect, are we seeing correlation or causation or is there a mechanism in common with all these labels thats the deeper cause, is queerness an interchangeable/'sometimes' factor or a central one, we are way too early to know that yet.

I think its probably not nothing. But we're also not uniquely fucked up. Maybe we're just sticking out, so to speak, so thats where the research is starting. Many people werent taking ME/CFS seriously until long covid prompted more research bc, iirc, there was now a lot more people affected who were harder to ignore. And who were seeking help. Like a lot of people have an allergy or a dodgy wrist or "that weird thing with my digestion" and they dont consider it a disability or seek treatment, yknow? And especially mental health and especially what runs in families, it looks normal to you so why would you ever bring it up to a dr? "Everyone struggles with these things. Everyone feels this way" well you do and your parents and aunts and uncles do and your siblings do, and maybe you told a dr forty years ago you were in pain and they brushed you off so you thought everyone was walking around in agony.

And that gets into an adjacent conversation about medicalising and diagnosing and when does that help and when is it like, making a negative thing of normal human experiences and variations, its not a disorder till its negatively impacting your life, if youre surviving but treatment could help you thrive is it worth the side effects etc etc plus the whole discussion of psychiatry in particular which can be an amount of guesswork and diagnostic labels are often just patterns of symptoms that we see oftrn go together and we dont always yet understand the underlying neurology. (One of my all time best therapists kept up with the latest neuroscience and always had very good and effective suggestions. I only stopped seeing her bc I moved away. If you can be seeing professionals who are keeping up with research, definitely prefer them over someone who hasnt learned anything since they completed training 50 years ago. Always.)

Tl;dr I agree with OP and also this stuff is extremely complex and we're always learning new things about us!

something that should be taken with a grain of salt are the statistics talking about the high rates of mental illness + neurodivergence among trans people (ocd, bpd, adhd, autism, etc)

I see both sides of the political spectrum taking these studies at face value - conservatives say we're broken, and trans people try to come up with reasons why for example autism + gender dysphoria makes sense and why one of them feeds into another

at the end of the day you have to remember that we're the one category of people on this planet who are legally required to go see a psychiatrist in order to receive non-psychiatric medication and surgeries.

more trans people are in therapy by law than any other demographic of people, and as a result, this captures more comorbidities.

if I had to look at my own family & rates of mental illness?

mom, dad, 2 maternal aunts, maternal grandmother, paternal grandmother, sister, sibling, and me all have OCD.

7/9 of them are cishet, never been to therapy, never diagnosed. 2/9 are trans, required therapy for hormone treatment, and were diagnosed.

you don't have to do any math to just see that the resulting statistics end up intensely skewed.

and we can think back to how autism was virtually never diagnosed more than 50 years ago - ruling out any grandparents being included in statistics - and even my parents' generation (they're in their 60s now) wouldn't have been included either.

I don't think it's to anyone's benefit to accept these studies uncritically. a lot of these things are hereditary and far more prevalent in the overall population than people realize

[hellenhighwater]

Following up on the “how do you do it all” ask I sent just now - I ALSO have ADHD, but only realized this recently, and I feel like thats what gets in my way. It doesn’t seem to get in your way as much, or at least not in the same way? I guess I’m asking if there are any tips/tricks/ideas you could share on how to make space for more creative projects

For a good chunk of stuff, it's weaponized rejection-sensitive dysphoria. Not in necessarily a detrimental way, but it counterbalances the executive dysfunction sometimes. I find external motivators to substitute for the internal executive functions that aren't firing. Sometimes I just give myself a theoretically-judgemental audience (in practice: these people are my friends and they would not actually judge me, but the theory of it is enough) that holds me accountable for the completion of a task or project. You're probably seen it at least once; I might post "okay I gotta clean my house, if I don't post updates you'll know I failed" and that is very literally me counterweighting the ADHD.

I recently did a pact with my mom that we would both help each other clean our garages (what I spent the last two weekends doing) because neither of us wanted to tackle that project alone. For pottery, I agreed with a friend that we would both do it together, so it's the obligation to her to keep showing up and working on things that keeps me engaged and enjoying things. Or the deadline pressure of ArtPrize, or the maintenance guy coming over who could possibly judge the state of my pantry, or the shelter relying on me to return healthy kittens, or whatever other little thing. Basically, sometimes, it's this

Which makes things sound...unpleasant? Honestly I don't generally find this to be a stressful system; this is the balanced machine of my brain. I decided a long time that I didn't want to medicate for my ADHD (for a lot of reasons, which I'm not getting into) so instead I find ways to work around and with it.

[missingininaction]

alright, friends, i might say something you don't like but i think it's important. not just to defend a character, but because i think this is literally making people's experience and relationship with this game worse.

give jimmy like two seconds to exist.

by hating jimmy so much you refuse to even say his name, and judge real, living people for liking him, you are cheapening your experience by boiling down the main character to the most ~yuckiest~ moments. and, by not making a seperate space for hating on him, you are drowning out the voices of people who actually have nuanced things to say about his character. you know, the skilled writers and artists that feed the fandom? limitation is what kills fandoms, you have to know that.

is jimmy a good person? no. is he a good captain/companion/worker? Absolutely Not! he crumbles like dust under any pressure and he immediately shifts blame off of himself, he is an actively harmful individual and it's right to be upset by his actions. i literally had to stop myself from saying "man FUCK jimmy." multiple times because i didn't want to spoil how terrible he got to my friends when i showed the game to them.

but you have to understand; people are more than their actions. thats part of the entire point of the game. thats why its so abstract. you are meant to think about the nuances of their situation.

we can agree that anya was way more as a woman than what happened to her and what she did as a result of it, right? that despite her best efforts, she was a victim of circumstance, and she deserves to be understood and analyzed fully?

then why, seeing a fictional man who has done immoral things, are you so disgusted you won't even draw, write or discuss him outside of hate? what is that doing for you, to ignore literally the main character of the game because of his actions?

now, this is not to say people can't hate jimmy. i understand it! as someone who has been a victim of s/a and abuse, i understand if you hate him and are even triggered by him to the point of avoiding mention of him. (but...why are you in this fandom? ((not aggressive im genuinely asking)))

you can feel however you want about any character, my goal is not to control people. but i thought it was common knowledge to not hatepost about someone in their tag? over actual insight into his character and, you know, the main themes of the game?

jimmy is a man who has struggled his whole life. both him and curly confirm that in the game. he's unable to control his emotional outbursts, and he likely had no idea what to expect from being in fucking SPACE for over a year with people he probably didn't even know before that trip. and pony express and their corporate safety corner cutting certainly didnt help, did it?

for one reason or another, he most likely was never actually taught how to manage his emotions. that's just how it is sometimes, growing up as a man. and it would make sense if he was forced to deal with everything himself, no? he always complains, but he still says he'll handle it. because that's what he's always had to do. and this is just the start of what i could say about what made him the way that he is.

he's a victim too, not only of his own actions.

surprise surprise, people who do awful things can also be victims.

honestly, this entire situation baffles me. how are you going to avoid one of the main characters of the game, let alone the one you play as ninety percent of the time? mind you, curly is also guilty, and i am happy to see at least some people giving him space for nuance. because he is also a victim!!! why is it so impossible to see jimmy as nuanced, when literally every other character also has incredible depth to them??

you're tarnishing and spitting on the beautiful writing of this game just because one character is too icky for you to feel comfortable thinking about for too long. it's horror, you absolute morons. it's supposed to make you uncomfortable.

if you hate jimmy, i dont blame you. but please, please, make your own space for it. be kind to people who want to explore jimmy and the darker themes, and like him for what his character represents. this is a video game fandom, not a witch hunt. and please, learn some fandom etiquette while you're at it, okay? okay. thank you

also just say his name. its not a slur youre not gonna go to hell if you say jimmy. like this isn't as important but still it just feels like a microcosm of this whole thing.

[tempesttz]

oh hey a topic i can talk about because webnovel isnt just for fanfic.

so i've used webnovel for over a year now? you can bet they have not gotten a single cent from me and i exploit the hell out of the bugs in their terrible system to allow me to read whatever the hell i want (no i will not post how i do it because i dont want that grubby company to be able to patch it) but its a pretty good (and one of the only that i know of) ways to read some good translated novels (especially of the cultivation/reincarnation genre, one of my favorites to read) to english. some more things about webnovel though

they will terminate and get rid of accounts that provide links to the original stories (because a lot of the stories arent original content, theyre translated, usually from mandarin. i am sure a lot of them are also MTL or machine translated works) to the dismay of readers

most stories are 40 chapters free, usually chapters of stories are in the hundreds, sometimes the thousands, and the rest are locked. no add pass no nothing go fuck yourself locked. to the dismay of readers

the male/female lead stories thing makes a little bit of sense to me because of the kind of content it hosts. i read 90% female lead content, the writing genre and "feel" of the stories is pretty different so as weird as it is i'll give them this one

they have a bunch of weird badges and things to add to your profile. most of them are things you have to pay for. speaking of here's my stats just to prove im not talking out of my ass here. the numbers are a little skewed because, again, exploiting the hell out of bugs to let me read whatever the hell i want. also how many badges there are holy shit.

my credentials. they overflow.

most of the art for the covers is stolen or, as i see more and more, ai-generated

i didnt even know webnovel HAD fanfiction by the way. so let that speak for itself. dont write fanfic on webnovel. dont write ANYTHING on webnovel. fuck these people. i am kind of terrified this will get my account terminated but hey fuck it thems the breaks i guess

this is a much smaller gripe but why is LGBT in the "female lead" section. its not yuri its mostly just BL why??? is this???? those leads are NOT female???? you cant blame the fujoshis for this thats on webnovel

they make you buy coins for EVERYTHING and they SHOVE them in your FACE.

they have this weird gamification thing they do with how long you read filling up a bar in the corner of your screen that gives you five fuck-if-i-know-points. so theres also that

if you are looking for fanfiction do not give webnovel your time. if you are looking for translated novels also do not give webnovel your time because its just not worth it, as hypocritical as i sound. go to wattpad. there are plenty of people semi-okay-probably-not-really-legally posting them there for your viewing pleasure, just put them in your offline library and read them with your wifi/data off because wattpad can also go fuck themselves for shortening the amount of books you can have offline to TWO i dont care how many years it has been i am still pissed off. and for running an ad after every chapter. ao3 supremacy until the end and stay away from webnovel they are a greedy greedy terrible company

I got this comment on a story from my Other AO3 Account this morning.

(Info redacted because I prefer keeping these accounts separate but no one follows me on the side blog I have for that account.)

The story was posted almost a year ago and is relatively “popular” by my average statistics even though it has tropes and themes that are big turnoffs for a lot of people (hence separate accounts). This popularity is undoubtedly because it’s a Marvel Loki story and that fandom is massive.

So there is obviously an algorithm or a bot scrubbing ao3 statistics and leaving this comment on fics that meet a certain metric with the main character of the fic inserted into the comment.

I had a little time to kill this morning so I decided to investigate further. And y’all this is so predatory. Come on this journey with me. It made me mad. It may make you mad.

First, if you go to Webnovel’s website, you HAVE to choose between male lead or female lead stories before you can go any further. WTF?

And that’s weird, but this gets so much worse. This is basically a pay-to-read site that has different subscription models. Which… okay BUT! The authors don’t get paid! Look at that comment again. They’re promising a supportive and nurturing community, but zero monetary compensation. It’s basically, “post your stuff here so we can get paid and you can get… nice vibes?” I mean look at this Orwellian writing:

Using the phrase “pay-to-read model” in the same sentence as “qualitative changes in lifestyles for authors” deliberately makes you think that you can get paid and maybe even make a living on this website. But that’s not actually what it says and authors will not receive one red cent.

Oh but wait, the worst is still to come. In case this breaks containment (which I kind of hope it does) this is where I mention that I’m a lawyer in the US.

I don’t do intellectual property or copyright law but I do read and write contracts for a living. So I went to look at their terms of service. It was fun!

Highlights the first, in which Webnovel gets a license to do basically whatever they want with content you post on their site. This is how they get to be paid for people reading authors’ writing without paying them anything.

Highlights the second, in which Webnovel takes no responsibility for illegally profiting off of fan fic. This all says that the writer is 100% responsible for everything the writer posts (even though only Webnovel is making money from it).

Highlights the third which say that by posting, the author is representing that they have the legal right to use and to let Webnovel use the content according to these terms. So if a writer posts fan fiction and Webnovel makes money from people reading the fan fiction, and the House of the Mouse catches wise, these sections say that that’s ALL on the writer.

So that’s a little skeevy to start off with but the thing that is seriously shitty and made me make this post was that these assholes are coming to ao3. They are actively recruiting people in comments on their fan fiction. And they are saying they are big fans of the character you’re writing about and that they share your interests.

They are recruiting fan fiction writers and giving every impression that you can make money from posting fan fiction on their site and hiding the fact that you absolutely cannot but they can make money off of you while you try, deep in their terms of service which no one but a lawyer who writes fan fic and has some time to kill will read.

I see posts on here regularly from people who don’t understand how this stuff works, don’t understand that they (and others) can not legally make a financial profit from fan fiction. And there are tons of people who will not take the time to dig into the details.

Don’t deal with these bastards. Fuck Webnovel.

[sircantus]

hey man. you wanna hear a fun fact. apparently bald eagles will sometimes grab red-tail hawk babies to feed to their own kids and then get confused and raise the hawk babies too. (later the hawk babies die bc they cant compete with the eagle ones but ignore that part)

can u imagine a dark sbi au where phil steals some child doesnt matter which one to give to his kids to play with or murder in some way but then bird instincts kick in and hes like aww omg i have a third kid now !!

like he's all scary and hissing and then the red-tailed hawk peeps and hes just like oh. baby? my baby? okay. maybe kristin comes home and is like WHAT thats not ours but then also falls for the baby sounds. (its a common problem)

anyways do with this information what you will

Anon im shaking im im grasping at the end of my face this is fantastic information im going to have a TIME with this tonight ohohoho the demons are gonna HAVE A FEAST

[miguel-owhora]

i hear your twin dick monster! reader x micah but may i propose monster! reader with a cluster of tentacles for a cock.. all with minds of their own, too. and some ovipos at the end for flavor.. sorry if this is too much !!

starting with some oral, he would be so cute all confused at what hes looking at, wondering what hes supposed to be doing. a mess of squirming tentacles at your crotch, more than ten, at least. they all act as if theyre their own creatures separate from you, moving and tangling amd tying themselves into knots. when micah is brought in closer to them, they all reach out for him, curious. hed probably be so unsettled.... looking up at you with wide blue eyes for a brief moment, wondering if youre actually about to make him do this, before he realizes he just needs to be a man.

hes so weirded out.. when he tries to lick at one, they suddenly grab his face, pulling him right up against them. they begin to slither over and explore his face. the next time he tries to open his mouth, one is forcing its way inside, exploring around his mouth, then down his throat. its hard not to gag, but hes a strong boy. a survivor.

his face gets fucked like that for a long time, the tentacles preventing him from pulling away, and slowly beginning to explore his mouth more and more. more would keep squeezing in, forcing his mouth open wide enough to strain his jaws. they cram into him until no more can fit. micahs eyes are rolled back all pretty, i bet hes even starting to cry. you pull out and move lower.

when you press yourself against micahs pussy, all the tentacles are desperate to get inside him. they squirm and stroke at his cock and dip between his folds trying to find their place. you can hold him down and barely even have to do any work as each tip eventually finds a hole to sit inside. hes trying to kick and get away from you, but you just place your hands on his shoulders and move him right back into place, below you.

they push in first as a cluster, then individually, one at a time when there arent as many out of him anymore. once every tentacle is inside him, theyre squirming and exploring, never falling still. theyre pressing against his walls and grazing against his cervix with blind curiosity. when you start actually thrusting, moving them all as one unit, theyre still moving on their own then, too. sometimes one will slip out and get lost amongst his tcock and folds, i bet some penetrate his ass at some point.

and micah is an absolute mess. youre bigger, and stronger, and have like 15 small dicks fucking him at once while also teasing at his ass and dick while still doing so much inside of him..... he hates to admit its the heaven that it is, so brainless and pleased that he can hardly even think anymore. hes devolved to a constant low groan thats only broken by your thrusts, any hopes of being smart enough to say anything intelligible having been fucked out of him quick.

he breaks so hard, in fact, that by the time youre orgasming inside him, you dont even realize that youve started filling him with eggs, and hes euphoric about it. small yet gooey, theyre maybe the size of a golf ball. one after the other fills him up, as much as he can take. even after you pull out, his belly has a beautiful bump in it. hes left flushed and panting like nothing more than a dog by the end, the feeling of being full keeping his fucked out brain from letting him think at all still.

he doesnt stop you, not even that he could, when you impulsively reach out to press down on the bump, and start forcing eggs out of him, each one stretching his sore, abused hole and making him gasp and twitch again. hes already cum on your dicks countless times, but the overwhelming feeling of each egg pushing out forces him over the edge one last time. hes silent, for once in his goddamn life, as a silent scream strains his chords.

its only all over once hes feeling horribly empty, his cunt still left twitching and spasming in the wake of you breaking him in. maybe hes even begging to be full again, pleading that not thinking was so nice for a bit there. and of course you oblige him, hes come so far from his usual state and hes being so cute that he deserves it, even. next time around he can keep the eggs in him and be your brainless little pet thats too fillednup to think for himself, and you can pride yourself on bringing the micah bell the third to that point.

grr... why didn't i think of this

[verdemint]

some pecco thoughts, maybe really stupid

but ive seen some posts about how pecco really wants to be perceived as a fair rider, a gentleman even and i totally agree with that, completely! and also the whole writing his own narrative and how important that is but also how its easier to be more well-liked when ur the underdog and ur losing and the valentino legacy of it all

but also i think we're missing the point that pecco for all his pettiness (like every champion and rider) he really wants to BE a fair, a gentleman rider, someone who does have rivalries but not toxic rivalries, where he can say him and jorge were kinda friends. he really tries so hard to be that

like u could see he was (even with the pain of losing) kinda genuinely happy for martin, when he said those words he was trying so hard not only to be perceived in that way but to ultimately be like that, to be . he's seen the chaos that a rivalry like those vales's had could bring, more then chaos is the anger, the resentment, those violent feelings but also how those could evoke love and devotion but still he tries so hard to keep it away. and this constant imposition on himself to be like that, to be perceived like that, the over explanations to the media, in his lil diary entries, this obsession with being understood (very much a la casey but im digressing) is not only for others, its first of all for himself. he wants to be like that and he tries so hard to suppress his other very human insticts (like anger or envy or pettiness that he still feels and sometimes cant control) and to become like that. so yes, about how important the public perception of him is but also how ultimately this desire to be fair, "un signore" is about himself and how he wants to be! thats the end goal, just to be himself and be accepted and appreciated not to keep pretending

im rambling but mmmh some pecco thoughts

its less about others than we may think

[softness-and-shattering]

I think both can be true, but arent always both true.

I read a lot, and had a ton of fun reading and writing, and also I had unknown unmedicated adhd and the stories I was absorbing and telling kept me happy and stimulated throughout boring classes and empty time and not having a ton of friends. And when youre so deep into a book or movie or whatever, that is a kind of dissociation imo, you do cease to be aware of the world around you in a meaningful way, especially when you look up and youre suddenly starving and its been hours. Im not sure if a "flow state" is a kind of dissociation or a kind of being very present.

For some people it is an escape, and thats not a bad thing. But it doesnt work backwards, not every kid who loves reading is escaping from trauma, sometimes theyre just a kid having fun and it doesbt need to be thought twice about.

And if it isnt harmful to your everyday life, your relationships, your ability to look after yourself, its fine. Theres no need to go looking for trauma under every rock, unless something isnt quite right thats giving you reason to look. Theres no need to project ones own issues onto everyone else who shares that behaviour just because. If youre happy then carry on.

And also, its true that a lot of people are messed up by regular things, unrecognised neurodivergence etc. and it can be healing to see "oh this other person is like me, Im not uniquely broken or some kind of freak". I dont really think anyone gets through life/gets to adulthood completely unscathed so Im not super on board with calling people fakers (which I am not alleging that op has done, im branching into a related discussion), but if its not negatively affecting someone life, or they dont want to look into it or hyper-analyse every aspect of their life, thats totally fine. Its not necessary unless it is. You(general) can absolutely just be someone whos always loved reading and thats all there is to it.

We have GOT to stop pathologizing the joy out of life.

Saw someone claim that if you read a lot as a child, you were disassociating. No, you were reading. Because reading is fun.

"I have a problem with maladaptive daydreaming." It's only maladaptive if it negatively impacts your ability to function in the real world. Laughing at a joke you made in your head isn't doing that.

"You seem to do a lot if creative projects. What are you escaping?" I'm escaping this conversation.

Like what is the end goal? Because so far, all this has done has made it harder to enjoy my hobbies because you're turning a mindless process into something I gotta think about.

[crazylittlejester]

Is Warriors ever going to competitively skate again? 🥺

It depends on quite a number of things really

It would not be impossible for him to do so. The biggest struggle someone would probably face trying to come back after three years of retirement is rebuilding strength and skills but Warriors skates around 15 hours a week and he does dance (primarily ballet) for even more than that, so his issue isn’t that he’s lost the ability to do certain things. He just hasn’t grown as a skater really since he hasn’t had guidance from a coach. His overall ‘elegance’ has improved since he is a dancer, so has some of his mobility and technique, but any strictly skating related things haven’t improved. If he’d want to return to competing he’d have to get himself a coach and work his way back into minor competitions and stuff to start off. He’s young, he’s fit, PHYSICALLY it wouldn’t necessarily be a huge issue for him. He can still skate his old programs just fine, he uses them as practice (and there’s a lot to get into with that because he was injured badly enough it required surgery AFTER he’d retired and then he had to go through PT and it was bad for him mentally and he set his old programs as like. a recovery goal which was insane but no one said he was mentally stable- but that’s an unrelated yap) and sure things go wrong and he’ll slip and fall but that’s just life and it happens, but he’s still physically capable of what he was when he retired at 18 (to an EXTENT- his one knee is a little weaker than the other)

As far as what he ACTUALLY wants in life, things get a little more complicated. He loves skating, GENUINELY he does otherwise he wouldn’t be so upset about having left, but he wasn’t the healthiest or happiest from about 13-18 years old because of how he started to view skating as the only thing giving him worth. Any praise or acknowledgment he got from that he took as a reflection of his inherent worth as a person, and he took any failures as him (a PERSON) not being good enough. His mom put him in dance when he was old enough to form a sentence because she was a dancer whose career got cut short and she couldn’t leave the life so she raised her son in it, and Wars didn’t HATE it (obviously, since that’s what he currently does) but he found skating, wanted to try it, and fell in love with it instantly. It was HIS thing, it was special to him, but also it’s his equivalent of the War of Eras in this au (and for Wild, it’s his fight against the Calamity, but Wild is a whole other yap post alskkdkdkdk), and competing really took a toll on him

But again, his ability to view his worth as a human being got messed up because of the environment he was raised in. He got praise and validation for pushing himself too hard, he got praise for training to do jumps his body wasn’t quite ready for, he got acknowledgment and approval for tearing himself apart and thats just what he was USED to, he never knew anything else. He’s still incredibly competitive because of this to the point that Sky and Twi can start recognizing when he’s getting too worked up and they have to let him beat them at a board or video game because he will have a nervous breakdown if they don’t and they don’t know how to help him when he gets like that because the therapy only helped so much and sometimes it’s just easier to let him win because for THEM it’s just not a big deal to lose. He’s gotten better about it, but it was really beat into him from a VERY young age that anything other than the best, anything other than number one is a failure, and that’s poured over into every other aspect of his life

And he’s been able to recognize that and work on it a bit, since he’s stepped away from skating, he’s gotten to a point where he CAN lose at uno and just laugh because he has a handful of 30+ cards and he can enjoy having fun with his friends. He has his bad days and his good ones. Because yeah dance is competitive just as theater is, you have to audition for certain parts you want, but there are multiple good roles in a show, there can literally be two different parts that are completely equal, and stepping away from skating has been GOOD for him in his first couple years of adulthood because he’s been able to spend some time trying to find himself and be kinder to himself when he isn’t at the top. He’s also been able to make actual genuine friends in his field for the first time in his life because he isn’t paranoid about how they’re viewing him as just a threat and he can actually TRUST them. Granted most of his dance friends are women so they’re not really competing for the same roles anyway, but he’s been able to make male friends too and be HAPPY for them when they get a better part than him (after the initial cry looking at the cast list lmao)

The TLDR is: Maybe. He has to become more secure in himself first and he needs to reach a point where he can view skating as an art that he loves and take criticism as a commentary on his ART and not his PERSON. He’ll most likely get his bachelors degree first and THEN start thinking about where he wants to go from there. He’ll never be able to step away from skating entirely, but he may find himself at peace being a coach and helping others grow and improve as opposed to again competing himself

[drdemonprince]

hey, i love your blog & your advice & wanted to seek some of my own if thats okay. i made a friend recently who i think is great - we've been through very similar mental health struggles and we're both autistic and i've had many a time where he's told me really compassionate and helpful things, and he's very accepting of my struggles & seeks me out to hajg out, which a lot of people don't do - but i just can't shake the feeling that he's subtley making fun of me or insulting me? he definitely has a sense of humour prone to teasing, which i am very sensitive to, and i've expressed this to him... but it's just like, these little things, like when he wanted me to come to something with him but i have plans, he'll say something like 'dissapointed you didn't come with me...' or 'well if you were COOL you would have come with me' and it makes me very upset? like i said i've brought it up to him multiple times, but it seems like it's just his sense of humour, but it's beginning to seriously weigh on me. he's said he wants to do better by me and asked me what the line is but i feel like i don't know, sometimes our running jokes about me being a bottom are funny and then they suddenly get too much, and it feels like i'm reacting to the lightest comment (like when he comments that i'm late to things a lot or asks me if im going to be late) sometimes, i don't know how to express what i'm actually getting upset at. do you think there's anything i can do to make this situation better? i really don't want to lose him as a friend, and i want to work on my sensitivity, i just don't know if this is something i can work through

This is tough, but you're doing the important work of communicating about it. I'm a lot like your friend sometimes -- I notice patterns in how people cancel or turn up late to things, and then will state directly that I've observed it, or make predictions based on that pattern, which hurts people's feelings even when I mean it in a completely neutral or even affectionate way. Sometimes when intimacy between me and another person builds, I want to show that closeness by kind of play-fighting with them or making little sarcastic jokes or remarks, which can be wonderfullll when the energy is met, but it can also misfire and really hurt people. I'm putting this out there so that you and any one else reading can feel free to ask about this perspective. For me, it's not intended to be cruel, it's intended to show that I know and accept someone as they are, and find their traits endearing, and I LOVE when people playfully rib me too. it may also be an outgrowth of PDA and attachment trauma -- a way I can feel safe with getting closer is by pretending to keep a distance.

That said, I also HATE when someone guilts me for not being available for something, not wanting to do something, or not showing up. Again, it's the PDA there. I would really really hate someone giving me shit for not going to an event with them, as your friend did, I find that stuff incredibly manipulative and unpleasant, and I personally would be very bothered by those remarks too. So I can understand, I think, both sides of things here!

My question for you would be how your friend responds when you tell him that his remarks have hurt your feelings. I think there is room for a middleground in such matters -- he should work on calibrating his barbed remarks, and you can remember the goodness of the friendship and temper your reactions to some things sometimes, but he HAS to view your concerns as legitimate and be willing to apologize first. Does he freak out and self-victimize or blow things out of proportion when you speak up? Has he stopped making any specific kinds of remarks because you asked? Have you asked? Are you comfortable telling him that something bothers you, even when you can't fully explain why?

I think that if this friendship is going to negotiate both your approaches, it will be done in the gray areas. Sometimes you'll feel triggered by a relatively benign remark, and that deserves talking about! Sometimes he'll say something in completely the wrong way, and he'll need to apologize, and that should be talked about too! It's never inappropriate for you to bring up your feelings, even if you can't give him perfect guidelines as to what he should say or not say. And he should have some leeway to express his care for you in his own way, to an extent, too -- this doesn't mean you should let him do things that hurt you, more that you should try to operate with the base assumption that anything he says comes from his position as your friend who cares about you. That's IF he has actually consistently shown he cares about you and your feelings. If he hasn't, that's another matter.

I hope that makes sense! tldr; keep talking about it. Keep sharing how you feel. Listen to him and watch his patterns of behavior, and if he shows consistently that he does care about your feelings, then you can let that trust help you to process and temper some of your hurt when he accidentally hits your insecurities sometimes.

[isjasz]

Extra notes bc dear god there are so many thoughts and random notes about this i need to throw into the wild:

What happened to the feather after 3l:

Ll: grian said 3l was all null and void, scar continued wearing it under his hood (this was also a scene i wanted to add that in comic but cannot)

Dl: he wore it proudly

Liml: wore on his belt, but i really rarely get to draw it so at this point its nonexistent

Sl: he kept it with him but didnt wear it, wore accessories that actually matches his aesthetic instead

What happened to the crystal after 3l:

grian stashed it in the void / basically like his back pocket area and he can access it any time

... but he did wear it like. once in dl. sometimes he wore it under his sweater

If you go digging you can prob find that these have been in my art since i joined the freaking fandom and it just kept going BAHDHWAHW

Actual extra notes:

The 3rd life feather stayed as the 3rd life colors. Its not colored here so you cant really see it that clearly but grians wl wings are completely different (and ofc all his other seasons wing patterns too)

Grian is looking straight into the camera in the last panel

if you cant tell here, that bubble is grian saying "scar" in the exasperated tired "stop trying to work your way around it i know thats the 3rd life feather" way and scar immediately gave up trying to yap out of this situation

…Note that Scar doesn't offer to re-enchant the crystal so it reflects his life colors again. Grian doesn't offer Scar a new feather. <3

Feather and Crystal (I remember)

Set after wild life session 5, under the premise that dd gave each other a feather earring and a crystal necklace back in 3rd life <3 They can be seen in a lot of my past pieces, the og concept was from bugs buggsxp back during dl !!

[aviad1b]

Fun Hebrew fact ב: "cakes and circles"

Hebrew has two main roots regarding of circles: עו"ג ('a.u.g) and חו"ג ('h.u.g).

In modern Hebrew, the more common one is עו"ג, from which the words עיגול ('igul, meaning a full circle) and מעגל (ma'agal, meaning an empty circle) are derived.

In older Hebrew, the wore עוגה ('uga) is sometimes used for describing a circle. As in the story of Honi the circle-drawer:

מֶה עָשָׂה? עָג עוּגָה וְעָמַד בְּתוֹכָהּ, וְאָמַר לְפָנָיו: "רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם! בָּנֶיךָ שָׂמוּ פְּנֵיהֶם עָלַי, שֶׁאֲנִי כְּבֶן בַּיִת לְפָנֶיךָ. נִשְׁבָּע אֲנִי בְּשִׁמְךָ הַגָּדוֹל, שֶׁאֵינִי זָז מִכָּאן עַד שֶׁתְּרַחֵם עַל בָּנֶיךָ."

(מסכת תענית, פרק ג', משנה ח)

Now, this is where it gets interesting: the word עוגה can also mean a round edible in Hebrew:

עֻגֹת מַצּוֹת כִּי לֹא חָמֵץ

(שמות י"ב)

וַיְמַהֵר אַבְרָהָם הָאֹהֱלָה אֶל שָׂרָה וַיֹּאמֶר מַהֲרִי שְׁלֹשׁ סְאִים קֶמַח סֹלֶת לוּשִׁי וַעֲשִׂי עֻגוֹת

(בראשית י"ח, פסוק ו')

and in modern Hebrew, it's come to mean "cake".

But the root of עו"ג still means a circle. So, back in , Aharon Ashman, who was a Hebrew poet, made a song for children about making a circle: "עוגה עוגה" ('uga 'uga).

the word "עוגה" in this context is supposed to be the command tense* of לעוג (la'ug), roughly neaning to maje a circle (or in this context to stand in a circle or something alike).

but because the word 'uga has come to mean "cake" in modern Hebrew, this song became the "cake song" in Israeli culture. and pretty much all Israelis think it's the cake song. made to he the cake song. it's become THE cake song. nobody remembers the original meaning

and idk i just think it's kinda funny lol

* the actual command tense of the word is עוגו ('ugu) for plural or עוג ('ug) for singular male or עוגי ('ugi) for singular female. the extra ה at the end adds a notion of "let's" to it. in a similar way to how the word הבה (hava) being used in Hava Nagila, with the command tense of the word being havu (plural), hav (singular male), and havi (? i think? for singulae female)

** well actually it can be either hav or havè for singular male etc but thats a whole other topic

*** i didn't manage to color the stars red here? it just colored the while thing for some reason? it's a weird tumblr thing ig. oh well

[legendary-lunatic]

I absolutely love that insight because you’re so right. Magnus is really interesting in that it’s a blend of first person accounts from a largely outsider perspective through statements, and it really does require that the source of the information does have the chance to get away at least long enough to tell the story- which gives us a sense of security but also is rather disturbing when it comes to finding that MANY of them fail to ultimately escape anyways and disappear after the fact.

I think that’s one of the things that makes Jonathan’s role as the Archivist and the Eye so terrifying; Because even after these people get away there is something feeding off of their experience, lingering in the corner of their mind and drawing them back to some of the most disturbing moments of their lives so they can’t move on from it. Jon could have easily been the scariest Avatar of them all had he not fought to maintain his humanity to the degree he did, and the moments where he slipped and we find out what an eldritch horror he is to those living who talked to him personally are creepy as hell.

In a way it’s the Fear to feed off all other fears, and I think it’s fun that that parallel also applies to the listener- we ourselves are voyeurs to all of the bizarre happenings and deriving amusement from their suffering.

But there is certainly a whole toss up regarding choice and inevitability in the Magnus Archives as well. Sometimes we get people who recognize the situation for what it is and have either the opportunity or the character circumstances to survive out of either mental fortitude or luck, but by and large the majority were seemingly picked and doomed to fail for no other reason than they were unlucky. And thats the scary part, as much as I love to champion those that managed to resist. Sometimes you see a spider when you’re a toddler and it comes back to kill you as an adult because F*ck You, that’s why.

The ones like this are thought provoking though, because we wonder if you can just not care enough if it’s possible to avoid the horrors….. But then there’s also the Homophobic Vase-

‘Do Not Open’ is still one of my favorite episodes because of this absolute legend. He’s at the top of my list of badass people who survived encounters because they just ain’t with that shit.

An icon.

[mariacallous]

the whole idea of attacking McBride as a "Zionist" is... it just brings back the most frustrating part of the late election "Queer as in Free Palestine!" the number of Queer people, particularly trans people on-line loudly declaring it was fine if they lost rights or Trump was elected because people in a foreign country where having a bad time and somehow... uh.... there's no trans rights till we're all free, but by all we just mean Palestine because thats all we'll talk about, for some reason.

and of course you're allowed to care about whatever political issue you want but this weird nearly obsessive move to put Queer rights on the back burner and also to tie the language and imagery of Queerness and transness to a different unrelated political movement is so fucking weird and then being like "anyone who doesn't agree with our radical stand on this totally unrelated issue no matter what they think of trans rights is OUT! and we're AGAINST! them! and they don't even deserve basic human rights!" insane

and worrying that at a time when trans rights are the most under threat they've EVER been in American history there's so much back stabbing and "no true Scotsmen!" in the trans community

I just also think people are either deliberately or uninformedly using "Zionist" in a way it should not be, and because it then short-circuits any attempt at discussion or trying to engage with them.

I've been in similar situations that McBride is facing, as has other coworkers, and I worry every day about it and about where we're going. And these have happened in blue states and cities, so there's no real escape. Some places and people are obviously better than others but it is very sobering to be reminded constantly how many people, even and sometimes especially those you would assume and who should otherwise, fundamentally reject and oppose you.

[puppyeared]

horrible truth bomb dropped on my head 20 min ago