#im having a real hard time doing stuff

[youngpeachenthusiast]

once again gripping the bathroom sink repeating to myself that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem and it is not the solution i will be using today

[ilovedthestars]

A thought I’ve been having: While it's important to recognize the long history of many current queer identities (and the even longer history of people who lived outside of the straight, cis, allo “norm”) I think it's also important to remember that a label or identity doesn't have to be old to be, for lack of a better word, real.

This post that i reblogged a little while ago about asexuality and its history in the LGBTQ+ rights movement and before is really good and really important. As i've thought about it more, though, it makes me wonder why we need to prove that our labels have "always existed." In the case of asexuality, that post is pushing back against exclusionists who say that asexuality was “made up on the internet” and is therefore invalid. The post proves that untrue, which is important, because it takes away a tool for exclusionists.

But aromanticism, a label & community with a lot of overlap & solidarity with asexuality, was not a label that existed during Stonewall and the subsequent movement. It was coined a couple decades ago, on internet forums. While the phrasing is dismissive, it would be technically accurate to say that it was “made up on the internet.” To be very clear, I’m not agreeing with the exclusionists here—I’m aromantic myself. What I’m asking is, why does being a relatively recently coined label make it any less real or valid for people to identify with?

I think this emphasis on historical precedent is what leads to some of the attempts to label historical figures with modern terminology. If we can say someone who lived 100 or 1000 years ago was gay, or nonbinary, or asexual, or whatever, then that grants the identity legitimacy. but that's not the terminology they would have used then, and we have no way of knowing how, or if, any historical person's experiences would fit into modern terminology.

There's an element of "the map is not the territory" here, you know? Like this really good post says, labels are social technologies. There's a tendency in the modern Western queer community to act like in the last few decades the "truth" about how genders and orientations work has become more widespread and accepted. But that leaves out all the cultures, both historical and modern, that use a model of gender and sexuality that doesn't map neatly to LGBTQ+ identities but is nonetheless far more nuanced than "there are two genders, man and woman, and everyone is allo and straight." Those systems aren’t any more or less “true” than the system of gay/bi/pan/etc and straight, cis and trans, aro/ace and allo.

I guess what I’m saying is, and please bear with me here, “gay” people have not always existed. “Nonbinary” people have not always existed. “Asexual” people have not always existed. But people who fell in love with and had sex with others of the same gender have always existed. People who would not have identified themselves as either men or women have always existed. People who didn’t prioritize sex (and/or romance) as important parts of their lives have always existed. In the grand scheme of human existence, all our labels are new, and that’s okay. In another hundred or thousand years we’ll have completely different ways of thinking about gender and sexuality, and that’ll be okay too. Our labels can still be meaningful to us and our experiences right now, and that makes them real and important no matter how new they are.

We have a history, and we should not let it be erased. But we don’t need a history for our experiences and ways of describing ourselves to be real, right now.

[girlboyburger]

wish i had a consistent character to show for this, but since i don't i just used icons :0]

blank template for those that want it under the cut

[puppyeared]

i feel like. theres designing a character with certain themes and motifs in mind, and then theres making a gijinka for the water bottle on my nightstand

[betweenblackberrybranches]

Yea im straight up not having a good time over here

[deoidesign]

okay so ages ago on the Bird Hellsite I saw someone make a coat entirely out of worm on a strings so now we have that incredibly cursed mental image right. My question to you is who in the TTA cast would be most likely to wear that thing and why is it Steve?

Oh, I met someone who did that a few years ago! Might have been the same person tbh.

I think a number of the minor characters would happily wear it, but the one most likely to make it would be Ash from the ghost hunting arc. Steve would wear it too, but Adam could make it work.

I had a grudge for years against worm on a string though... It was 2014. Flying across the country with my art class for the final judging of a competition. New York City, baby. Every day was constant activity; always going to a different event, a different activity, a different project...

And the stage was set: A small budget for the ILNY tourist store, two exhausted teenagers, and a misleading ad. The sound was off, and without captions we were left to assume... And we believed if the worms got wet, they would squirm. It made sense why they were $20 with technology like that.

Me and my best friend bought the worm on a string. We named him... Hal. It was all we talked about that day, the anticipation of getting back to the hotel.

Finally we get to our room. I was more excited about this than about being in the top 5 for a contest with a $50,000 prize. We opened the package, deterred by none of the signs, confirmation bias in full force... What's this string? Oh, it must be so they don't squirm away and get lost!

Fools.

Two fools standing over the bathroom sink, Hal in ones hands, and the other turning on the faucet. Nothing. A gentle shake of the lifeless soggy body. Still nothing.

And then the dawning realization: The worm was never gonna squirm around. We were duped.

How could we let that go... For years, I didn't.

I've since developed a fondness. It was never Hal's fault. We were exhausted, not thinking straight, and we blamed him for our own failure. I can only try to make amends... But I truly believe Hal never held resentment in his fuzzy blue heart.

Anyways we got second place and then the next year we won but that's less important.

[toruq]

[mellotronmkll]

Wverytime I sit down at a computer to make music I get so scared

[phagodyke]

the masculine urge to take a saucepan off thr draining board and bash myself repeatedly over the head with it until I pass out and no longer have to experience feeling Bad 😍

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

More to Me

Pt 2 of Glaciated Memory AU | Master Of Ice Art | My Dearest Friend... (pt 1/prequel)

1k

When Zane found the blueprints in his father’s old lab, showing his design and revealing what he was, he thought it would be the last major discovery about himself that he would find.

Oh how wrong he ended up being.

He always had dreams. Prophecies. Memories. Not quite to the degree that Lloyd began to have them, but they came all the same.

When they needed to discover more about the serpentine war, they became all the more vivid.

He was fighting. For his friends. To defend them. Ice wrapped around him. His dark hands, the only exposed skin he had reached and pulled his friend to their feet. “Watch your step,” he told them. The man who looked up bore a resemblance to Lloyd in a distant way. His hair was a similar colour and he had a serious expression set on his face in a similar way, too weary to be on the face of someone so young, just like Lloyd.

“Thank you. We must hurry.”

The sounds of battle crept up behind him slowly as they ran. He used his powers to create ice walls left and right to keep their assailants out. They were heading somewhere. They were trying to get to something but what--

Dreams were a funny thing when you did not sleep. Even stranger was waking up.

Zane did not need to recharge. He had a self-sustaining power source. Still, sometimes he would still need rest if he overused it, not unlike his human counterparts needing sleep. Sometimes he would close his eyes and other times he would lay down and stare up at the stars or relax and read. Sometimes his eyes closed on their own, and although it was not sleeping, it was very close to it.

In this case he woke up with something in his chest pulsing, not unlike a heartbeat he thought. He didn’t need to breathe but he breathed anyway. In and out. Long and slow.

In all honesty he had never wondered. But now, it was time to ask.

“I’m gonna be totally honest with you, dude,” Jay said. “I have no idea what this is.”

Zane sat on the metal table in their little room set aside for experiments on the bounty, his chest compartment open, wires and things clipped and plugged inside and hooked up to the ship’s computers. His power source pulsed like a heartbeat as it always did, its bluish white light reflected in the color of his eyes. He contemplated Jay’s diagnoses.

“Nya and Pixal could not explain it either.”

“Oh, I was the last person you came to, awesome. Love that. I feel very appreciated and properly utilized.”

Zane smiled. “I did not wish to interrupt your gaming.”

“Sure, sure,” Jay waved his hand dismissively. “You don’t have to lie to me. I’m not real active with this kinda stuff anymore anyway.”

“Do you regret not being involved in it?”

“Eh,” said Jay, “I’ve got other stuff to fill the time now.”

“You can always come back to it.”

Jay paused to stare down at the wires and pliers in his hands for a long while.

“Maybe.”

Zane smiled. “I am sure Nya and Pixal would appreciate your company.”

.

Pixal was always very digitally focused. Despite being a nindriod himself, Zane had never felt the same pull towards technology that she did. He always operated off of instinct.

When they discussed it one time, Pixal had been intrigued about how he interacted with technology because, in her words, it seemed as though he operated things through feeling rather than numbers or calculations. Which was a funny thing to hear considering he was known by the rest of the team as the most calculating of the bunch.

Zane connected with technology the way he connected with his elemental power. Instinct, practice. He didn’t know the logistics of how it worked behind the scenes, behind the instinct and feeling. It had been that way since his first days training with Master Wu. His ‘sixth sense’, they called it. Now there were numbers that flashed across his vision when he calculated certain things, when he felt who was close and who was far. Then, it had been nothing but a feeling.

What a silly and confusing thing it was to not be human but to operate off of feeling.

“You’re different, Zane,” Pixal told him.

“Well,” said Zane, “I am a nindriod.”

“So am I,” Pixal told him. “And you are still different.”

That sat with him for a few days. He pondered on it quite a bit. Turning it over in his mind again and again. He was different, wasn’t he? Even in the body of a young adult without his memories he had always acted older than his counterparts. He had attempted to imitate and enjoy things with them and he truly had, but it had taken some practice.

Still, what he was remained a mystery. Not even Wu could comprehend what powered him.

“When I look, what I see is the element of ice, contained within you.That is all.”

Which, in and of itself, was a curious thing.

How was it possible for a vessel of technology to hold an element? How was it possible for the element to dwell in that vessel when it was passed from parent to child, through destiny and fate rather than human engineering?

“I guess we could try taking it apart,” Nya said. “But we don’t know what that would do to you.”

His core wasn’t what it used to be. There wasn’t a piece of it that he could spare. When the original source was destroyed by the overlord--when he had been destroyed by the overlord--the only piece that remained belonged to Pixal, who Chen’s men had dismantled to retrieve the remaining piece of Zane’s core from and place it into Zane’s new titanium body. That piece now resided in Zane’s chest as before. Small and there was no telling what would happen if they split it another time or if they chose to experiment on it, so what it was would remain a mystery.

For now.

Zane kept dreaming. He kept seeing a battle, feeling urgency. He kept seeing his father’s face, younger than he ever remembered witnessing.

In the end what he chose to do was visit the site of the battle that he kept dreaming about.

It was in an eastern area of the Birchwood forest. A distance away from his father’s original laboratory in a still snowy but warmer climate. He placed his hand on the frosted over birch that felt so familiar. He felt as though he had woven through them before despite never having set foot in this area of the forest. His father had never explored this far nor bothered to leave the lab.

It was curious. That it felt so familiar. Curious that he felt… no, he knew he’d been here before, but according to Pixal no one had set foot in this forest since the war had ended.

He scanned his surroundings. He could feel when his titanium skin started to frost over after being there for a few hours.

“Have you found what you are looking for?” Pixal inquired, her voice settling comfortably inside his head as it had when she had no body to linger elsewhere. It was something that was familiar too. Something that was a memory that he knew he had experienced himself.

“I am not sure,” he confessed. “It’s a strange feeling, is all.”

“What will you do?”

“I will come back home.”

And he did just that.

“Find anything?” Kai asked him when he landed on the deck of the Bounty. He was sitting on the steps leading up to the control cabin.

“Nothing but old graves, I’m afraid.”

“Too bad. You’ll figure it out eventually. Just let us know if you need anything.”

“Thank you, Kai. I will.”

There were curious things about himself he could not put his finger on, but he would always have his friends there to help him discover and support him if what he found was not what he expected.

“I heard you’ve been having dreams.”

Zane glanced to see Cole leaning against the doorframe of his room. “Yes.” He watched as Cole entered, taking his response as the invitation it was. He came to sit next to him on the bed Zane didn’t need but still used.

“Have you talked to Lloyd about it?”

“Not yet. I was attempting to investigate first of all. If I were having visions of the future I would have initiated discussion with haste, but to my knowledge thus far they are things of the past.” Saying what he thought they were--the previous master of ice’s memories--felt inaccurate somehow. Saying they belonged to someone else didn’t feel right. And if Zane had learned anything from his time living, it was that his feelings often allowed him to see while logic blinded him.

He closed his eyes and breathed for a moment despite the fact he did not need to.

“What do you feel like it is?”

When he opened his eyes Cole was watching him. He was the first person to ask him that. Not what he thought it was. What he felt.

He remained still as he thought for a minute. “Something. I feel it is something.”

“It’s not nothing. It’s something,” Cole repeated.

“Yes.” Zane said.

“Okay,” said Cole. Zane could hear in his tone that he believed him. “So what next?”

“I follow where I feel.”

“Like always then,” Cole smiled.

Zane smiled slowly back. “Yes. Like always.”

It was comforting to know Cole trusted his instincts. That his family trusted his instincts. At times he did not feel he deserved such intense trust, but he was grateful for it nonetheless.

Like Cole said, whatever this was, he’d figure it out.

He was Zane, Elemental Master of Ice. Titanium Ninja. And possibly, if his theories were correct… something more.

[bunnyboy-juice]

spent the first hour and change at work deleting some old files and am having a grand ol time laughing at myself for not realizing i was a lesbian sooner

[thebirdandhersong]

btw if you know good ways to deal with an achey heart (this is not a physical condition btw I just happen to be in love for the second time in my life and it is awful) I would also appreciate practical wisdom!!!

[sonknuxadow]

its been almost 5 years why are people still saying that they made sonic ugly on purpose as a marketing tactic . please that theory is so easily debunked . internet stop spreading misinformation about sonic challenge failed immediately

[aroanthy]

hi!! i know u talk a lot about aromanticism a lot on here, but i don’t think i’ve ever seen u talk about aromantic anthy. would u mind discussing/elaborating on it or linking to a post where u do because i’m very curious!!

i got a similar ask half a year ago or something ridiculous like that on my main blog, but i’d like to really do justice to my url right now and explain it in more concrete terms.

i will say, it’s important to bear in mind that this reading of anthy’s character is very much informed by my own experiences, and a lot of those experiences are ones im not keen to talk in depth about. but you know. let’s make some nebulous gestures towards ideas of being traumatised, being autistic, struggling to meaningfully connect with others and honestly not really wanting to do such because of how they treat you.

like ive previously said, an aromantic perspective on the world would, i think, really benefit anthy. when youve lived your whole life experiencing violence at the hands of these patriarchal structures, of which romance is absolutely one, it’s kinda like. damn. im uncomfortable buying into those ideas.

anthy also has this lovely line in ep 19 where she says to utena ‘romance either happens or it doesn’t’ and it’s just sooooooo. so very interesting to me, actually, that anthy would say something so black and white about ‘romance’, a topic that anthy knows better than a lot of rgu characters is hopelessly confused and arbitrary and often enabling violence. and utena (fellow aromantic gaybo) says 'yeah, i know, but...'. these simplifications, these elisions. what is and isn't articulated. but what? maybe things are much more complicated than we'd like to think.

anyway enough of that tangent. one thing i as a trans and aromantic person always return to when discussing trans and aromantic readings of characters/texts more broadly is that there's no singular piece of evidence that can really cement these readings as Undeniable. it's like. okay. there's a critique of romance as a patriarchal structure in revolutionary girl utena. there's an ambiguity about anthy's feelings towards characters like utena, where there is clearly a queer connection but it takes shape in unconventional and complex ways. me, i'm aromantic, i see all of these pieces and i go oh well that's because she's an aromantic lesbian. you know, there's plenty of little moments i can evidence but those moments can be used to argue for an alloromantic lesbian anthy too. romance is a very arbitrary thing and i think everyone should take their own approach to it unapologetically. of course, mine is that it's hellish and i want nothing to do with it, but im just one guy. and im okay with that. i feel strongly about this reading and it is personal, and id be dishonest to say otherwise, but i do also find that it's well-evidenced in the text. as one of my lecturers once said, don't worry about authorial intent, it isn't real <3

[puppyeared]

Jitterbug

[apencilandpen]

The last couple of months I've been watching a whole lot of Drawfee. It's super fun and funny, the hosts are great and they're especially good artists. I've been feeling like I'm pulling at the leash of my art as of late, trying to like, grow and develop but not really knowing how or where to start, or being scared to do bad art. I want to push my ideas BEYOND the realm of fanart, and that's hard, bc that requires more actual practice and stretching ideas conceptually than what I usually do. I've generally been feeling really bad about my art, feeling like I can't draw or what i wanted to draw was stupid or lame or "out of my league." And none of that has been helped by the time of year, other elements in my life that I'm frustrated by, and the general everything of the world. It's been really hard to even pick up my pen and doodle, even badly.

But a few weeks ago I watched the Drawclass hosted by Jacob Drawfee on how to practice when you're not good at keeping a schedule or routine. And not only is he a really good teacher, all of the points he made clicked in my head. The schedule worked. I'd been wanting to get better at interiors, and I have. And more importantly, picking up a pen and opening my sketchbook doesn't feel as bad anymore.

The past few days I've been watching Nathan Drawfee's Drawclass grab-bag, and this part stood out to me:

He was talking about how a lot of the times when you're starting out, or somewhere in the middle of the beginning of your art journey, all you wanna do is accurately draw a guy. And that's what I've been doing for lime 2 years. All I wanted to do was accurately draw my guys. Then I wanted to do more composition-y representations of my guys. Then I wanted them to have more mood. And now I want to move beyond doing all that and accurately drawing my guys and into telling stories. Maybe inspired by music or my guys or concepts or characters or shows or movies or from my own roster of OCs that have gone untouched for too long. I wanna do series and big illustrations and backgrounds and lighting and characters. I wanna look at more real life professional illustration work and pick it apart. I wanna read and get more art books. I still don't wanna monetize my hobby, but I feel like my art has just been plateauing for a really long time and it's finally hit a growth point. And Drawfee has made it fun to think about that. It's a lot less scary when its fun.