#it's just been really hard

[the-writing-mobster]

Hey guys! This is gonna be a tough post but I just need somewhere to vent a bit, I've been through the ringer this past week. This is kind of a personal post too? So by all means scroll by if you don't want to read stuff about medical emergencies...

...

Kay. So... I had to take my mother to the ER due to complications with a recent surgery. Scary. Emotional. Exhausting.

Recovery for her will be a long and very difficult journey. Painful. She's doing better now and she gets stronger everyday but it's still a deep concern for me. I know the first week after she's released from the hospital will be extremely tough for everyone, especially her.

Personally, I've been really emotional. Crying on and off. Trying my best to be strong for her. So tired. So tired.

We were hit with a bombshell that she could have cancer, but the very next day were relieved to hear pathology reports showed the mass that'd been removed last week was benign, so that's def one less thing to worry about and a huge weight lifted off our shoulders....

All that being said — Honestly?

I could really use some kind words. Encouragement to help me get back into the right mindset to continue with art and writing. That's my safe space, you know?

Anyway, thank you all, and thank you to my wonderful mutuals who have been listening to me vent these past couple of days.

🫶🏻

[malwarechips]

yknow i never noticed the sheer rareness of images having ids or alt text on this website until i started adding alt text to my art (and trying to remember to add it to any images i post in general, especially text screenshots) and that makes me kinda sad

[allthatdivides2]

my dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called “public transit” 😳💊 you’ll be going wherever you want for an affordable price 💯👨‍����

me: yeah whatever i dont feel shit

5 min later: dude i swear the bus should have been here by now

random guy at the bus stop with me: the transit app is lying to us

[eydilily]

would you bite the hand that feeds you?

[bastardlybonkers]

i feel like not enough ppl are factoring in the cultural clash between laios and shuro and the many micro agressions shuro faced while being in their group. literally the name 'shuro' in itself is one

his name is toshiro 😭 lets also not forget that he has his own communication issues, in the opposite way that laios does- thats literally a factor in their argument, that his envy for laios's ability to express himself sincerely manifested as part of his distaste for him.

ig all this to say like, was their fight heart wrenching, especially when reading laios as autistic? absolutely. anybody whos ever been in laios's position knows how much it hurts to realize someone you thought was your friend doesnt actually like having you around, especially when they didnt tell you and you had no way of knowing due to not understanding their cues. but im begging yall to step back and see the nuance of this situation cause im gonna be real a lot of you are kinda just brushing over it acting like everything is toshiros fault and that hes a terrible person when in reality hes an average guy who really, really clashed with laios and it led to a very long misunderstanding due to their supremely opposite methods of communication. even laios and toshiro, after letting everything out in their fight, were able to come to an understanding and start a foundation for an actual friendship built on better communication

ok yknow what Edit: i shouldve made it even more explicit at the end of this post, i hadnt thought i would need to since i started the post with this, but i think a few too many people are missing my point so i just wanna clarify. i shouldnt have said 'really clashed' and left it at that because yeah they did, but it wasnt just their opposite methods of communication, it is also very much that toshiro was experiencing microaggressions via laios. it may have been unintentional on laios's part, but it still happened and wore him down, made it harder for him to communicate on top of both the more subtle social cues that he was raised with and his own communication difficulties. i also want to say that the fandom reaction to toshiro and the complete ignorance of this point is also racist tbh or at the very least ignorant. i understand that the anime did not cover this panel, and neither did the manga, as this was an omake, but im gonna be real with you guys. there are enough context clues within the story to clue you into this. if you didnt pick up on it thats ok, but i think this is a good lesson in picking up subtext in the stories that youre watching and/or reading. kui shouldnt have to explicitly say 'by the way laios was racist to toshiro' for this point to be understood, and at the very least, when the author portrays a character in a sympathetic light (as kui clearly does) it should make you question Why they are doing so and what makes them sympathetic, rather than youre immediate and only reaction to be 'well i hated what this guy did/said so i hate them and they suck'. idk exactly how to finish this, just. idk. question your biases and gut reactions to things you see in media and stories, and think about whether or not theres subtext that youre missing.

[i-am-a-fish]

I'm very sorry to ask something like this, I've really been struggling with this question, and I wanted to ask the combined wisdom of the people on this site

I would like to know why you keep going, and what drives you to keep living. I know there are a lot of reasons to stay alive and enjoy life, I can think of a few that personally resonate with me, but I really want to know what your reasons are

You do not have to comment on this if that's too big of an ask, and I'm very sorry for asking something like this, I really need someone's help, I feel like I don't have much purpose

Also if I may ask, please don't post any suicidal ideation in the comments of this post, I really can't handle something like that right now

[inkskinned]

the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.

sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.

you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.

it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.

but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.

they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.

they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.

barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.

and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.

but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.

they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!

this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.

[cashmoneyyysstuff]

yall i kinda dont care what you gotta say on this one cus its real to me but katsuki is lowkey a crybaby. i fully believe he cries extremely easy,, like..HAVE YOU SEEN HIM ??? do you see how quickly bothered and emotional he gets over stuff ? no,not angry—bothered and emotional. (but the angry part also works lowkey i like to think in certain situations he gets so angry he cries.)

so yeah every time you argue—wether it’s over the phone n he hangs up on you or in person and he storms off to get away from you. he’s just so mad at you, he’s angry so so angry but he doesn’t like fighting with you. he’s in the right, he’s sure he is.. but a minuscule little part of him sorta wishes he wasn’t so this fight never happened. and also, don’t tell anyone, but he’s also pretty fucking worried you’ll leave him.

oh and there they are, he feels little tears prick at his lash line, practically clawing at his face the moment he feels them coming. he sniffles loudly nose already clogged and he scowls so hard, eyebrows pinched harder like that’ll make them go away.

he’s angry, so angry. he tries to convince himself he’s fuming just so he can stop crying.

—and he cries anyway. it’s nothing too dramatic, no sobs. only a hiccup manages to pass through his lips and he’s heaving and sniffling hard, wiping at his eyes and nose.

and he cries anyway.

[mimimar]

finally completed my comic based on the song ivy by taylor swift!✿ please zoom in to read the text and see the details~

✿.✿.✿

you can get the digital zine pdf here! it includes extras like character profiles, costume design, more art of willow and ivy, zine-exclusive sketches and an illustrated guide to the symbolism of all the flowers in this comic.

you can also get prints of individual pages here!

✿.✿.✿

[decarabias]

forever thinking about royal’s bad ending. my thing with it is that maruki doesn’t necessarily give anyone what they want most, he gives them what’s most appropriate for them to want within a maruki-approved framework. iirc there’s a really interesting text sequence in the game where he just straight up changes someone’s career because they’re not “good” at it, regardless of whether that’s what they actually want. why struggle at all? ever? right?

and so ultimately i don’t think goro akechi’s greatest wish is necessarily ren. i think it’s a wish for sure, but his greatest wish is his own agency. despite any regrets he has and the fact that shido and yaldabaoth treated him like a pawn, he's generally pretty adamant about owning his choices and their consequences. he doesn't want that erased. and instead, you end up with pleasant boy™ if you take maruki’s deal. maybe maruki (incorrectly) thinks sanding off all of akechi’s rough edges will make him easier for ren to love. but the crux of it is really that maruki has to essentially lobotomize him to preserve the illusion of his perfect reality, because their ideologies are so diametrically opposed that akechi would spend every waking moment fighting back.

this isn’t to undermine ren’s importance to akechi btw — he explicitly acknowledges that he wishes they had met earlier, and there are countless moments throughout their confidant that underscore how much it means to him that they mirror each other so well. he absolutely does want more time with ren, just not under these circumstances.

and that’s also what makes ren’s choice on 2/2 doubly devastating. he knows that either way he loses akechi. and if he takes maruki’s deal, he loses him knowing that his last moments with the real akechi involved the two of them being unforgivably out of sync.

[whumpluv]

people trying to talk through sobs is so good in whump. have you ever tried to talk while crying? it's not easy. quick, gasping breaths in-between desperate and incoherent stammering because you're sobbing too hard to get the words out. should be used in whump more tbh.

[taffywabbit]

so like. at what point are we going to stop listening to game companies saying "the game was poorly received and didn't meet our sales targets, and that's why we're removing it from storefronts and taking down all the servers mere months or even weeks after release" for titles that had a long expensive development, were barely marketed, and nobody knew they'd even released until after they heard they were getting shut down and couldn't be played/purchased anymore?

I feel like the prevailing takeaway for anyone who doesn't just conclude "yeah, game was pretty mid, makes sense to me" has usually been "this company just has unreasonably impossible sales expectations and treats every project like a failure if it doesn't print a trillion dollars". but these ARE allegedly experienced business execs who aren't complete idiots, and after this most recent debacle with Concord I'm starting to wonder if a bunch of these "games getting wiped out of existence when they underperform instead of just being allowed to persist as they are and maybe improve with time" cases in recent years might be more of a Warner-Discovery type situation, like nuking an entire animated series or film that was worked on for years and preventing it from being sold because it has to be officially unprofitable for the company to use it as a tax write-off. I look at a game that was worked on for 8 years and only made available for 2 weeks, and it's hard not to see the parallels.

great work, AAA games industry, really normal and sustainable stuff you're doing over there as usual

[roebeanstalk]

help needed for bills & food

venmo

kofi paypal

cashapp

I owe my roommate for three months worth of utilities now, and it's to the point where I'm anxious to leave my bedroom again. I'm too anxious to double check the amount due but it's about $280 I think.

I'm really struggling to pull in commissions and having an incredibly rough time getting myself in a good spot to seek employment. working with my psych and therapist to try to get myself there but between scheduling issues and anxiety and a general Very Hard Time Doing Anything Ive been unable to make any real progress.

any help at all is super appreciated. donations and the occasional commission are the only way I've been able to stay afloat. thank you so much.

[nounaarts]

LEAKED SCENE FROM SONIC MOVIE 3 ??

*queue 80’s music*

Here’s all their crimes listed :)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Normal boy spotted.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.