#i dont want to be “better” i just want to exist ??????

[ohmygoly]

I dont typically like getting political on tumblr because I know the crowd of people who typically follow the fandoms I'm in. I know the crowd of people who usually pay attention to such fandom cultures in the first place, and I truly don't want to make myself such an enemy in anyone's eyes. But also, I don't want people irrationally scared that the new Hitler is coming to make their lives awful and oppress them in every way imaginable. Because to act like America is about to become Nazi Germany is to prove how out of touch you are with what other countries are doing and also just extra anxiety on your part that doesn't need to exist. I want your life to be less stressful, I really don't want anyone afraid for their life when it's unnecessary. Besides this "checklist" I want to comment on, remember that many changes aren't probably gonna feel very personal to you and while you might notice some slight differences, the day to day will probably be the same as it is through every presidential transition. Some things are cheaper/more expensive maybe, maybe your office or school has some slight alterations, but thats usually about it.

I don't hate anyone. I have met and become friends with more people I disagree with on a lot of important points than I do people I agree with on said issues. The scenarios in which I have met these people have allowed me to see how friendly, creative, and talented they are. It has also allowed me to see just how precarious and overdramatized interactions and relationships with them can be. This does not even include the internet or social media.

"Powerful and Continuing Nationalism" Americans value America first. A healthy country wants to succeed, and to want something to succeed you have to love it first. If you would prefer every other country over the one you live in, then don't live in it. But there is no logic in wanting a country to have influence and do better and actually progress whilst also despising its existence as a country. Plus, most of the "America first" sentiments don't pair with a "hurt other countries" sentiment. More like a "they can and should handle their own problems" one. If you can respect any amount of individual freedom, responsibility, or self pride, then you should be able to respect it on the national scale.

"Disdain For Human Rights" Its not that anyone in power at the moment disdains human rights. In fact, they know that within the government, every human has the right to pretty much everything. Anyone can run for office, vote, start a business, not be discriminated against as a potential employee or customer, and overall do pretty much whatever they like. What they don't want is those rights to be taken away because someone is offended or inconvenienced. Most republicans don't even actually mind trans people, they just dont want children permanently altered or women's safety threatened. If you have the right to sleep with whoever you want, dress however you want, and call yourself whatever you want then why shouldnt others have the right to live, be safe in their own spaces, consent to who gets to see their body, to their speech and opinions (offensive or not)? Those things can live side by side. In fact, the best you can do when it comes to human rights is not over manage speech. They should, however, manage some actions that can have harmful/permanent effects.

"Identification of Enemies as a Unifying Cause" This is clearly about illegal immigrants and trans people. Again, no one thinks trans people are the enemy. More so the ideology since overall it blatantly refuses the truth of sex, any self responsibility (you choose how you present yourself to people and how you manage your own thoughts and feelings), or any concern for others' feelings and safety that isn't a trans person. It would be like saying because someone hates depression they hate all depressed people. No. You as a person can still be good and deserving of all your human rights, but the ideas themselves aren't helpful to any society. Illegal immigrants aren't being threatened with mass genocide or really much violence at all. Rather, if they havent committed other crimes within the country that would deserve actual punishment they are simply facing return back to the country they came from. It is immoral to allow illegal immigrants in the country, not only for the safety of the citizens that the politicians swore to protect but also because it is exploitative. It's also dangerous to make it here, so why would you want to encourage people to risk their lives to come to a place where they can't enjoy all the rights of being a citizen?

"Rampant Sexism" As a woman, I can say with absolute certainty that I do not see one ounce of blatant sexism from the politicians coming into power and I certainly do not feel politically oppressed in any way. There are many other cultures where sexism is even worse, if you can even call anything in America actual sexism, but I'm sure it would be considered racist to make such a claim. Its not as if middle eastern women are fighting for their lives and education and equality or anything. Us Americans have it so bad because sometimes a man says something weird and gross. The most sexist thing I've ever come across on a societal scale within my life is the prioritization of men who say they're women over actual women. But we definitely don't see the new people in office supporting that sentiment.

"Controlled Mass Media" This is the only one I will give even the slightest ounce of credit, simply because I know the government would prefer Meta over other companies and they did ban tiktok/almost ban tiktok? In any case, if you can still get news from pretty much every political ideology, access any other social media website, shop at the "Banned Books" section of a book store, and access literally any other form of media that has existed throughout our history then your media is most likely not very controlled. The thing with social media specifically is that it is still so new so we will obviously need to figure out how to navigate that within our physical world but that isn't a sign of a fascist country, thats simply a sign that we are facing a rapid change in technology and don't know how to handle it yet. Its a great thing we have a constitution and hella rebellious citizens who will make finding the best, least oppressive solutions easier here than probably anywhere else on the planet!

"Obsession with National Security" The only reason there's a surge in national security is because there has also been a surge in threats against the security of this nation. Through many foreign nations and within our own borders. This country cannot be successful and cannot help any other country in the world if we are falling apart while we are doing it.

"Religion and Government Intertwined" There is a difference between politicians being religious and it actually being intertwined with our government. Most government policies made are based on our constitution and how we can best respect the rights given to us through it. The religion of any of the politicians is not going to become mandatory or oppressive to anyone not of that religion, because that is not the goal. Anyone can come up with the sentiment that they need to fix the way the government runs and protect the rights of their citizens. Yes, religion might influence some of their opinions on things and a few of their changes, but if you elect someone you have to accept that they have ideas about things. Thats just how it works. Overall, religion will not become permanently intertwined with the government or forced upon citizens.

"Labor Power Suppressed" Last I checked, you can get any job you want. Literally, you can quit any job you don't like, and just go find a new one. Not to mention they want to improve businesses and they know that the labor class is very vital to that.

"Rampant Cronyism and Corruption" Corruption is a vague word and a lot of the people in the new administration don't even agree on everything. The main thing they agree on is that they want to see America succeed and that they will respect the elected president's right to see that mandate through, as an elected official. How terrible of a president to hire people that don't hate him and won't sabotage the policy goals he was elected to see through.

Looking more like a checklist these days. I want off this ride. 😭

[kosmicdream]

the biggest problem with my writing

it would be really difficult to explain the writing process chronologically for FFAK because its like. oh yeah mop was made as a concept in 2017 and he was made specifically to interact with dr slate after rock's death. i wanted to make a creepy janitor (a weed), former convict, that had some weird personal history with spoon. he would be determined to try to work with slate to get revenge.. i didnt know what had happened yet but at this point in the comic, im only just starting to draw scenes of them interacting. mop/nail essentially started as a side character for slate's perspective, obviously didnt stay like that but.. i mean, nail did not start as fork's fork. that just fit together somehow in a way where its impossible for me to think it otherwise, it might as well always have been that way. but nail didn't exist for the first three years of the comic and when i did actually decide on his character i basically put the spoon/rock fight on hold (again) to just draw nail/spoon scenes.

i can't say this was the smart choice or whatever its just what ended up happening. i think a lot of arc1 was built on impulsive choices like that, which comes with good and bad of course.. i dont write the same way anymore, but it still happens sometimes. gaueko/kamila were not meant to be a ship but their chemistry felt so natural to explore i decided to dive into it and let that happen as part of the comic. now in 2025, not only am i actually drawing scenes i wrote for 2017 in FFAK, but also finally drawing scenes in NRD that i also wrote in 2017. Not sure how it happened where i'd be doing that for both of them at the same time in 2025, but that's how it ended up. Its just strange how it did because its also so likely for me to end up going with a new idea impulsively (like making nail) that i put aside something else planned for the new idea (the rock/spoon fight.) Even if i eventually do return to the older scene, the order of events are totally changed. Granted, in the end i AM happy i waited to draw the spoon/rock scene, but not exactly for the narrative reasons - i just know in ch12 i was kind of like.. over-rendering everything in a way that i think would have made drawing that action scene a nightmare. by the time i got back to it in chapter 14, i had figured out how to dial things back and not over work my pages as much anymore. not that over-rendering made everything worse, but overall the experience of making pages was not as effective and draining. 

Not sure where im going with all these thoughts, but it is curious to me that I made nail/mop about 3 years into making FFAK.. which by the time FFAK was that old, a lot had happened in the story and development wise for the story. When i think about it now, its hard to conceptualize just how much I wrote/made during that time. Now i feel a lot more conservative with my ideas and plans, but thats also partly because i am always accommodating FFAK. When there wasn’t any FFAK.. that space to make a lot of things was totally open. I didn’t feel restrained. That was great! But im very different now in every aspect of the creative process. I am very restrained in many ways, of my time, my choices..ect.. I have to calculate it with everything else im already doing.. In a strange way though I think I prefer it. I make a lot better choices for the stories, but they don’t come easily or quickly which can be frustrating. Its just so different and i wonder if that differences are going to be seen and felt in this second arc as much as it is from my perspective? I don’t know.. I still havent drawn it yet, so that part is still a mystery on how it’ll be received LOL.. Just a lot i’ve been thinking about lately. My (unfinished) fairy comic is already 5 years old now and im like.. What..? but its true.. I started working on it in 2020. It does NOT feel 5 years old. Because when FFAK was 3, it already had changed so much in that time. 3 years was like a lifetime of experiences for FFAK. 5 was even more than that. Comparing comic experiences doesn’t ever really make sense logically though. They all have their own paths for growth.. And i see that more & more now especially with NRD, which I have never BEEN at a better place with creatively than I am now. Its like the love of my life since last year, which I would have never expected.. But that took me like 8 years to get to. Usually you expect the honeymoon period of a story is going to be in the early years ,when the idea is ripe and new and exciting.. And sure, NRD had that but its not like it is now. It has never felt more alive and interesting to me to work on. 

There’s been a lot of years of struggle with NRD too, where I almost felt like I was wading through the mud and not sure if it was even a story worth telling cuz it just felt like it was holding me back, reminding me too much of my life i was trying to move on and heal from. But last year i had a breakthru and now im in a sort of different struggle with it where I dont want the comic to end anymore. I will try to though, but as its getting closer to it its like a mourning process has started. It both feels impossible to end the comic because of how hard/long is to actually draw things LOL but also impossible like emotionally to let go of. I made NRD during the fallout of.. A LOT of things in my life but also specifically a break up of a long term relationship.. I’ve been single all this time and now the comic is like. My surrogate boyfriend almost? 

Im AWARE of this intense attachment to it and its like.. My comfort blanket that enables this loneliness in me to not do something different in my life to change that loneliness. Part of me feels like i CAN’T yet. I have to finish the story! But that’s not really it.. I think that if its gone, I won’t have a "reason" to enable my isolation, and by reason I mean purpose in a goal that I’m determined to accomplish that is significant to me.. Which of course, finishing a story will always be one of the biggest motivations in my life despite avoiding it so much, as much as possible in some ways to get to the point and moving on from it. Sometimes its hard being so aware, knowing myself through my own art and writing that my biggest problem is not being able to let go. 

[hoshizoralone]

reflection

[ganondoodle]

since tumblr always has to suffer my personal vents and breakdowns and rants and annoyances you get the most wips and pics of unfinished stuff, im sure that makes up for it

the (unfinished) shiekah arm concepts that made me want to explode and i dont think im gonna work on again

[the-owl-tree]

out of all the hollyleaf chapters, this one from outcast has always really stuck with me in the way it resonated in constantly being taught that finding a husband and settling down to have kids was an expectation or even a path to happiness. squirrelflight's response isn't to tell her that she doesn't have to have children, that she doesn't need to become a mother if she doesn't want to - instead it's to assure her that her "path is marked out" and "she can have kits and still return to the warrior's den". hollypaw's pov chapter comes after lionpaw's and jaypaw's, neither of which have to deal with these questions and struggles. i'd be curious to hear the author's intentions behind the scene- it's interesting characterization - one that resonated with me obviously - but it's so strange to see in a children's book, one by authors who at the very least hold milquetoast liberal politics, be unable to outright have their authority figure in the scene, the one whom the child readers are meant to look to as guidance, say "you don't need to have children if you don't want to, you're not any less for not wanting them" and instead don't acknowledge the idea of not having kits and instead try and say, albeit in a less blunt way, "you can still have babies and a career! you can find a way to have children and still pursue your goals!" which isn't the Good Message shit approach they think it is.

this isn't really meant to be an organized piece of analysis, i just wanted to revisit a scene that really stuck with me as a young kid struggling with my identity. surprisingly out of everything in po3, this is really what made me resonate with the idea of hollyleaf being a lesbian.

[moeblob]

[bigskydreaming]

Imagine looking at a character whose entire premise is that in every stage of his life, he's made every version of himself into someone that inspires people to such a degree that EVERY SINGLE VERSION OF HIM has people wanting to literally follow in his footsteps in some way or another.....

And coming to the conclusion that like.....the most important things about him are the sum of all his trappings. His entirely homemade developed from scratch could not exist if not for what he already was and brought with him BEFORE crafting this newest version of himself trappings, with his greatest trait throughout all of it being his adaptability; his ability and willingness to roll with the punches and not try to simply weather any opposition or changes to his life but instead reshape himself as needed to better fit INTO whatever new shape his life and the world around him takes. All while managing to carry the most innate, fundamental and necessary aspects of himself from one version to the next. Thus every single version of himself is different but simultaneously every single version of himself is also undeniably the same person.

The strength of this character, to me, will always be that he can be so many versions of himself, he can become so many things, all without ever actually losing or discarding any of the aspects of himself he considers most essential, the things he's not willing to lose or give up just to keep going. Finding that road not taken by most, usually because most never even think to look for it as an option. But one that he's always able to find because the one trick he's mastered in his tumultuous life is threading that needle of not just digging in his heels in an unproductive way but rather being selective about when and where he makes a stand and decides "this is not a thing I'm willing to compromise about" but here are places and ways I can and will change and evolve and adapt in order to make it possible for me to hold onto these parts and keep them as they are.

And that's why its always so mind-boggling to me that so many writers can't seem to think of anything else to do with Dick Grayson other than invent some new reason for him to just....not be that person, or to like just take the character whose most basic fundamental trait he's NOT about to compromise on is willingly giving up his spot in the driver's seat of his own life.....and make him just a passenger in his own life and stories.

Dick Grayson at age nine....at age nineteen...at age twenty nine....the one core thread running through all versions of him is the only way he's standing back and letting you call the shots for him or putting him on the sidelines in some way is over his dead body.

HOW he goes about that, what that looks like, who he becomes and what aspects of himself he plays up at some times and what traits he lets fall by the wayside at other times when they offer less in service to his primary goal here....that changes constantly. He changes constantly.

But those changes are almost always (or at least they used to be/should be IN MY OPINION) made with the intention of keeping certain things about him or his life as consistent as possible.

That's the duality of Dick Grayson that I'm here for. The inherent contradiction of him that COULD allow for endless conflict and breaking new narrative ground in all sorts of ways if mined properly:

His eternal willingness to compromise....but only ever in pursuit of doubling down on the ways he's not willing to compromise.

Forever walking that tightrope in ways that only a kid born and raised in a circus could ever hope to.

[lesliemeyers]

In This Podunk Town — A South Park fanmix about the tumultuous experience of growing up with (and sometimes growing apart from) your best friends in your insane little hometown.

Cover art by me (an homage to The Great Depression by Defiance, Ohio)

Listen here.

Tracklist ⤵

This Feels Better — Defiance, Ohio | Bleed American — Jimmy Eat World | Bored Teenagers — The Adverts | Feel Like Rain — Motion City Soundtrack | Seattle — Public Image LTD. | No Rest For The Weekend — Orange | Working Title — Mt. Eddy | Knowledge — Operation Ivy | Big Lizard — The Dead Milkmen | Kids — The Frights | Halloween 3.5 — Rozwell Kid | Dry Heat/Nice Town — Cheekface | Familiar Patterns — PUP | Don’t Die In Yr Hometown — Antarctigo Vespucci | Fat Lip — Sum 41 | Minor Threat — Minor Threat | Hey Suburbia — Screeching Weasel | Stand There Until You’re Sober — Bomb the Music Industry! | Let’s Get Breakfast — Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra | Circles ‘Round the Moon — Nana Grizol

[al-luviec]

something simple to try to get out of art block (it didn't work)

[oatmealcrisp-freak]

"shipping saiki is aphobic because he's aroace!"

stares at you with my demiromantic asexual in a committed relationship eyes then looks at the camera like im in the office

[spitblaze]

gnc and butch women (cis AND trans) and transmascs are punished for performing masculinity past certain thresholds of arbitrary attractiveness because people that cishet society categorizes or clocks as 'women' are not supposed to perform masculinity. hope this helps 👍

[ganondoodle]

watching a video of someone playing an older game (not even THAT old) and constantly having to hear them go 'omg can you imagine how much more pretty and good this would be if it ran at 60+ fps with highest end graphics of the current modern games and in 4k???' over and over while also commenting on some graphics looking slightly muddy and how ugly and shitty 30 fps is

and i just cant help but get incredibly annoyed at that, cant you just appreciate the game for what it is?? the constant focus on smoother everything and graphics so detailed it looks faker than the real world is such a limited view on games- more polygons and higher res textures doesnt equal better ffs

i, and i might out myself with an unpoluar opinion here, but remakes are in my opinion often rather unecessary, just rerelease the old game, just make it avaible for people, officially, you dont have to reprogramm the entire thing!! maybe upscale it a little so it doesnt get stretched into a blurry mess if possible but even that i will work with no problem!! there are cases where its pretty much an entirely different game (FF7?) and i get seeing one of your fav old games get some new paint can be really cool, not arguing against that- what i dont like is that those remakes replace the original as that isnt made avaible, only the new version- like i wish i could play windwaker on my switch, but i cant stand the "HD" remake of it and i know if it ever were to get ported it will only be that version like the original doesnt exist anymore and my earlier point that many people consider more fps, more polygons, more resolution as automatically better

i dont need games to be running at 60+ fps, 30 is enough, sure id like it to run smoothly on that without huge drops, but when its stable 30, why would i need more? more often than not i prefer simplified graphics bc they often focus on the most important parts of what they are trying to achieve or work with an interesting style to compensate and i LOVE THAT, also id like to not have to download 100+ GB even when i would turn it on its lowest settings anyway, save me the space- and that is if i even got hardware that can run it at all, my computer struggles with slime rancher and i dont have the funds to buy the newest consoles nor computers

im not against remakes per se, but the fact that the old will more often than not disappear entirely and remain unavaible forever and that higher end graphics are automatically seen as better drives me nuts

[astraystayyh]

this feels like ive been shot in the arm the fact that hyunjin wanted to cover the moonlight which usually has soft, comforting connotations, like even the gentle light was too much for him at the time and he wanted someone warm to be there with him please hold me

[tomwambsmilk]

fr tho @staff why are you trying to make tumblr more like other sites why are you destroying your niche in the market please there have got to be ways to make tumblr more accessible to new users without sacrificing the very things that your existing userbase loves

[cringefailfagcat]

gonna crawl into a hole why does no-one want to go to my birthday

[sunsetzer]

That Hub Network Ask Megatron clip where he says the only reality TV star he wouldn't kill is Donald Trump really aged so fucking poorly lmao he is exactly the kind of person Megatron hated