#me so often holy fuck

[starry-bi-sky]

Clone^2 - Separation Strikes

"Why do I have to go?" Damian asks, surly and accent-thick, it sounds more like a demand and a whine at the same time. Sitting on the kitchen table with his arms crossed, in a green t-shirt that Danny bought him at a whim when he was at a thrift shop, and black shorts, he's never looked more like a kid. There's a little backpack leaning against the table leg, Damian begrudgingly picked it out when they went shopping.

His English has grown in leaps and bounds since Danny found him -- er, or more accurately; since Damian was spat out in front of him. -- and very little did they have to use the translator on Danny's phone these days.

Which meant one thing: Damian can start attending school comfortably now. And 'go' was the Amity Smiles Child Care Center. Danny and Jazz went as kids until they were twelve, and Mom and Dad actually managed to convince the center director to let Damian enroll for the summer.

And it was summer; Damian starts today.

"Because," Danny says, trying and failing to hide the smile pulling on his face, his heart warm and soft, and also laughing at Damian's expense; "being cooped up in the house all day isn't good for you, and you're starting school in the Fall. And, in Jazz's words: you need to have interactions with other kids your age for the benefit of your social development. And besides, it's only for the morning."

Damian's nose scrunches up, and his eyes roll so violently that for a moment, Danny thinks about joking that he'll get his eyes stuck like that. He holds his tongue; his little brother already looks like he's five seconds away from committing an act of violence.

"I don't need social interaction." Damian sneers, his cheek in his hand; a neverend pool of pride. "I am--"

"The Blood of the Demon Heir, better than everyone else." Danny cuts off, waving his hand in dismissive circles, his voice mockingly deep. Damian's brown skin darkens in embarrassment, and he scowls at Danny. "I know, bud. But Jazz is right, -- don't tell her I said that, -- you should be around kids your age."

Especially when he starts First Grade in the Fall. Honestly -- Danny was a little nervous to send him to the center. Damian's long since cut the habit of trying to kill or otherwise maim people, his palms ache-burn with gentle reminder, but his tongue was as sharp and as cutting as his sword. He still struggles with trying to quell it when he's upset. Vicious child-weapon that he once was, and will never be again.

Danny knows that it comes from a place of fear and defense, that Damian lashes out because that's what he's been taught. That at the end of the day, he doesn't really mean what he says, and he's learning to express himself better. But the other kids don't know that, and kids can be unforgiving and cruel.

Danny just...

His slow beating heart sighs, melancholy settles behind his lungs.

He doesn't want Damian to be outcasted. He doesn't want him to be alone.

Not like he was.

Damian sneers again, but says nothing, his shoulders crawling up to hide his ears like a turtle receding into his shell. Danny watches him silently, leaning against the kitchen counter with his own arms crossed. The clock hanging on the wall ticks in their ears -- it's almost time to go.

He watches Damian, careful, and so he sees it when his little brother's stone-shell pride and petulance shudders, and cracks. The darkened furrow of Damian's brows weakens, and for a moment, slants back.

Ah, Danny thinks, his own shoulders slumping. Epiphany washes over him, and his sad-heart soothes in warm understanding. So that's what it is.

His head tilts, and his hair spills over his shoulders, messy and fluffy, tickling his neck. Some of his bangs fall into his face. "Hal 'ant easabiatan ya habibi?" He asks, voice low and soft. Just as Damian's English has improved, so has Danny's Arabic. He still stumbles over himself some days, and Damian says his accent is trash, but they can have whole conversations now in Damian's mothertongue.

(Danny was incredibly proud of himself for it.)

Damian's face darkens, his blush spreading across the rest of his face, and he ducks his head down. Grown-out curls, black-brown and springy, falls over his eyes. "La!" He yells, loud and indignant, and not at all convincingly. "La 'asheur bialtawaturi!"

He was nervous. Danny can see it now, in the hunch of his shoulders and the tightness of his face, and faintly, he can feel it too. In the ecto-rich air of the Fentonworks House, it thrums, barely-there, like a hummingbird behind his lungs.

Danny can't stop the little, fond smile that forces itself across his lips and upticks the corner of his mouth. "It's okay to be nervous, little brother." He says, he sounds like Jazz when he says that. He doesn't think she'll mind him borrowing the nickname.

He pushes himself off the counter, and Damian refuses to look at him, hiding behind his hair and in his shoulders. It takes three long strides for him to reach the table, and Danny turns, plants his hands on the ledge, and hoists himself up. Right next to Damian.

Damian leans into him easily when Danny's arm wraps around his shoulders and tucks him close to his heart. He can feel his ear against his ribs. Danny hunches over him, resting his chin on Damian's head. "It's so okay to be nervous, actually. I was nervous, Jazz was nervous." He tells him, scratching the blunt edge of his nails across his scalp. "Everyone gets nervous."

"'Ana last aljumiea." Damian mumbles, as small and feeble as he was the night on the OPS Center balcony, realizing that his mom and the League weren't coming for him. Realizing that he was replaceable.

Danny's half-working heart squeezes; in grief, in rage, and his faucet eyes sting. He breathes in carefully, and presses his nose into Damian's hair in a loving faux-kiss. "You're right, you're not everyone." He says, steady and strong, because if he's not a pillar for his family, who else is he?

He can feel Damian's eyes flick up to him, and Danny smiles into his black-brown curls. Tilts his head to squish his cheek against him instead, hand dropping to thumb below Damian's lashes. "You're Damian Fenton," Because the adoption went through a few weeks ago, and he's still riding that high, "You're my baby brother. O' Artist Extraordinaire, Kickass with a Sword, Vegetarian and Wonderful Co-Ghost Hunter."

Damian tries to stifle a smile, and fails. Score! Triumph gathers in Danny's gut, his smile grows wider. He squeezes Damian tight, and only releases him so he can look him in the eyes. "And if anyone gives you a hard time at school, and I mean anyone--"

Danny has bad memories of the teachers looking the other way when the other kids were bullying him, all because he was a Fenton.

And Danny, bleeding heart, bleeding hands, loves his family more than he will ever love himself, will never let Damian experience the same injustice. Not if he can help it.

His eyes narrow, and the buzzy-film of ectoplasm covers his eyes, making them glow, "--You tell me. And as your awesome great big brother-and-technically-dad-but-only-biologically, I will handle it."

Damian, wonderfully made, full of light, his little brother Damian, giggles weakly at him. A sound that's worth it's weight in gold. The scary eyes dissipate, and Danny matches the sound with a cock-eyed, impish grin, dragging Damian into a soul-crushing, too-tight hug. The kind that only annoying older brothers can give. "Got it?"

That gets a proper, if short, laugh out of Damian. He wriggles in Danny's arms, trying to break free. But Danny does calisthenics, his arms are as big as Damian's head, so it doesn't work. "Understood, now, daeni 'adhhab ya 'akhi!"

Danny laughs, loud and bright, and loosens his hold just a smidge, only so he can adjust his grip and hop off the table with Damian still in arm.

"Never!" He crows, hoisting Damian slightly. One eye flick at the clock, and in one quick move, he secures Damian under one arm like a football, and hooks his foot under the strap of his backpack. Kicking it up, he tosses it into the air and catches it with his free hand, and slings it over his shoulder. "Now, to the car, my boy! Before we're late and Mom and Dad get charged."

Damian groans, childish and dramatic and long, but his face is all squished up with a wide grin and glee. Danny can taste his joy beneath his tongue.

"And, if my little pep talk didn't encourage you," He says, reaching the door to the garage, flipping Damian up onto his hip instead. "If you have a good day today, I'll make you bal mithai when you get back."

Like all kids at the promise of sweets, Damian's eyes widen and glitter. Danny loves seeing Damian be a kid, it's his favorite thing in the world. "I will!"

[lovelyrotter]

can ppl in this fandom like... stop... implying that transmasculinity in hcs or (especially) canon is shallow or misogynistic or even transmisogynistic on princible, like literally just by being prescent in someones mind or in the text. like that doesnt fuckin feel good. thats kind of really nasty to imply. if its not okay to say about other trans experiences, maybe dont say it about this one either. why is there a weird little exception here. yall KNOW how much that sucks to hear all day every day. what the fuck

[moeblob]

I normally don't repost my art like this but since most of these are just posted as one picture I also don't wanna reblog a lot of posts. So! Please look at my Dream Wardens. I love them so much.

For the outfit meme thing btw, I would like to point out they don't really need sleep and they exist to work so no need for fun outfits. HOWEVER! Marcus and Colette's ties are the other's eye colors. Sil and Luce have gray ties because Luce was more recent (still a hundred years of partnership) so it's pretty much "you're being scored to make sure you can keep the job" and they eventually would get ties to match the other's eyes color.

The basic premise is! They live in a realm filled with dreams which they have to keep watch over to make sure don't escape. Whether dreams or nightmares, they must be contained. So it's kind of like a prison - each person has a cell that contains their dreams. There are.... a lot of wardens. But each "floor" has eight wardens and it's a circle where the wardens work in pairs. So Marcus and Colette are the focused pair and then they make rounds, they'll end the shift in a rest area where they either hang out with Luce and Sil or Sophia and Ruby. Those are the four they interact with while those four have another duo that they meet on their rounds.

The wardens cannot die. Literally impossble. They can get injured but it heals really quickly. So while Marcus would prefer to not be impaled (again) it wouldn't actually kill him. He'd just be sore.

They also just do not age. So they're centuries old. That said, for a while Colette had a different partner who retired and she got Marcus... and Marcus was incredibly quiet and reserved and scared of messing up for like 10 years before he started to warm up to her. (Time do be feelin' different there) And then he opens up a bit to Sil and Robert who was his partner at the time. And then hundreds of years pass and Marcus is super comfy with them (Sophia and Ruby still intimidate him a bit but that's different) and suddenly! No more Robert. Now it's Luce. And Marcus spends five years avoiding any and all conversations with him because oh no he's hot. Sil gets interrogated by Luce because "have I offended him in some way? he won't even look at me" and Sil is just "dude's shy. took him ages to warm up to me and my previous partner" and eventually Marcus laughs at something Colette says and Luce is like "ohhhhh nooooo I'm doomed he's so cute". While the entire time Marcus has been refusing to attempt conversation because "no he's handsome I'm doomed since I'm bad at conversations".

And they mention Robert sometimes (Colette, Marcus, and Sil) around Luce and Marcus seems chill about it. But then Marcus gets a serious injury that will recover but it would impact his job too much to patrol without a head so they send a temp replacement and it's Robert. And Sil is like "oh oh trade you Luce for my old partner give him" and Colette "are you kidding? you had him for sooooo long I wanna patrol with Robert now! it's only gonna be a little while!" and Robert just .... doesn't wanna be there. And when Marcus is fit to return he begs the people in charge of their routes to NOT LET ROBERT LEAVE until he can say hi and they let him. Unfortunately it involves Marcus busting into the break room saying "ROBBIE ROB!" and Robert sighing but standing up and extending his arms for a hug. Two pats on Marcus' back. and "okay bye". Luce is left in absolute despair cause he's never seen Marcus that happy oh boy.

Anyway my dream wardens mean a lot to me and I really miss them now.

[aibouart]

admittedly, i am afraid to talk about this, but have wanted to for a long while. i don't see a lot of people discuss this kind of thing, but i decided to do so for the me who was struggling and didn't know. also i have no idea where i am going with this and it's very late for me rn so here's a whole ass ramble on vent art. and also a bit more on how it's impacting how i view my art, now. i am terribly sorry if it's not very cohesive, my thoughts on it aren't yet cohesive either WOOPS

i wanted to talk a bit about how vent art really impacted my mental health, and how the idea that art needs some kind of meaning to have meaning really has been weighing on me lately (i know this is a concept i am assigning to my work and is not actually the norm/standard expectation of others consuming art. but it IS a sentiment i have seen enough that does impact me).

i want to specify, obviously i am not saying vent art is bad.

nor that doing vent pieces, or vent blogs, will ultimately result in what i went through for a number of years. rather, that this did happen to me, and there is a near impossible chance i am a unique case in any experience i will ever have. if you do vent art and it helps you, that's good! im not judging anyone for anything here. if your experience does not match my own, that's what it's like to be human~. i am not invalidating anyone on purpose by sharing my own experience. sorry for the insane disclaimer but it will eat me alive if i go to sleep thinking "what if they think x cuz i didn't say y and think im a terrible person"

---

i used to do vent art frequently (you won't find much on here as it was uploaded to a personal at the time). anytime i felt down or had a line of dialogue in my head making me feel bad in a way, i would draw for it. but the way i had interacted with it was really unhealthy. it became a terrible feedback loop where i'd feel bad, draw how i felt bad, look at the art, and ruminate even more on how i felt bad, until it spiralled so out of control i would lose touch with reality and get lost entirely in feeling like garbage.

i would just get so lost in the cycle with vent art that it would make my mental space worse and worse, and i would use the vent art as a negative confirmation bias. the words that hurt me i wrote down and anytime i looked again, they would hurt me again. but i would keep looking, and i would keep drawing.

i have always used art as an outlet, but for some reason the way vent art impacted me was unhealthy. it wasn't a good outlet. and it took me years to cut ties with it. i relied on vent art for a long time, but it took a lot of introspection and thinking to realise it wasn't the release i thought it was. and it was hard to let go, too.

i haven't touched the blog in a few months, now. i haven't done much vent art at all since then and genuinely, i've been doing SOOO much better. i no longer ruminate nearly as much as i had done so, i no longer get caught in a feedback loop that lasts for days to weeks. i still feel like garbage like people tend to do, but i don't put myself in a cycle over it anymore. i have gone back to it a few times in moments of desperation, but what used to be every week/every few weeks is now once a month maybe. and not to the extent at all (i would oftentimes post ~20 images in one night, before).

but i keep thinking about how, while the way i had done vent art was bad for my mental health, i keep feeling that just because i do sparkly cute and happy drawings, now, or drawings with no real meaning, that my art has nothing beyond face value... i do like a lot of my vent art. i think their compositions, or hidden messages and meanings, or colour use, was interesting.

but it wasn't worth the price for me.

so i am a bit caught in an in-between, here. my favourite form of art is the expression of love-you liked something so much, you dedicated time to draw it. and yet i cannot ascribe that to my own work very often. i think that man i wish i could make art with some kind of deeper meaning, that speaks to people, that's more than just pretty colours or shiny shading or a character everyone likes, or a character i like. but i just... don't know if it's for me.

ultimately, i could develop a healthy relationship with expressing and exploring negative emotions or experiences through art, but... do i want to? do i have to? do i need to? is it not enough to just draw something because... i like it..?

of course, the answer is yes, draw what you want, draw how you want, it's your art. but i am still trying to come to terms with that idea. i dont want to be seen as some shallow artist who just draws what's cute and pretty because they can and it's all they can think of, but like what if that's just what i like to draw??

in the end, that alone is good enough, drawing because you like to, because it's fun, because you like the thing you're dedicating time to creating for. it's just hard to grapple with after discarding a type of art that i felt was the only way i drew "for real".

anyways i am sorry this is soooo fucking long, and for all the clarifications (IM STILL NOT SAYING VENT ART BAD AND EVERYONE WILL DO WHAT I DID!! Dx) and the fact i had no real point here (probably)

anyways i will continue to draw what i want because i like to, as i have always been.

[cookinary]

Okay, I get it now

Thanks @mileikcin for making me curious about this game like god damn I've been missing out

[forest-wolfie]

This is out of the blue in terms of what I post usually but this is something personal I feel the need to express. I am deeply upset by the amount of queer people who simply will just WILLINGLY misgender a trans person simply because they use neopronouns or use pronouns that are not conventional he/she language.

I have seen so many accuse us of bringing the queer movement down when it is YOU bringing the movement down because you want to misgender, harass, and speak over us trying to tell you we do no harm. Every fucking bigot out there sees us all as faggots no matter what pronouns you use. If they see any visibly queer person a bigot can and will get violent no matter WHAT they think you are. Identity and pronouns doesn't fucking matter, what matters is creating a community where all of us are safe and feel like we belong.

Neopronouns are not hard to learn and I don't want o hear that excuse either. They use the same grammar structure as they/them pronouns, simple as. Learn a person's pronouns or don't be their fucking friend. Yes I sound aggressive and angry because I am. I am mad at the fellow queer people othering those who still belong there. It's infuriating. Take us seriously, keep us safe. We do not deserve harm just because you think the sounds we use to refer to ourselves don't make you comfortable. We are in this fight together regardless if you like us or not.

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

sometimes i do worry that i create so much art to make up for my lack of personality... but then i remember that the act of creation is literally pouring your soul into something and hoping others see a glimpse of you in there so actually maybe i'm alright lol

[parasitoidism]

ramblings of insane person

[red-dyed-sarumane]

i need people to start paying me for every time they tell me "oh but ur arts so good ur wasting ur talent u need to do it professionally" wrong i need to do art to draw beautiful characters that not a single other person cares about while feeding every ounce of love i have into my work or to convey thoughts & feelings beyond words and to even think of doing otherwise is to deny my own nature "oh but u can do what u want and then sell it" why is everything about money to you why cant u just enjoy things at what point in ur life did u forget how to have fun

[dimonds456]

thinking about freehoun so bad tonight oughhhhhhhhhhhh

[storm-of-feathers]

I maintain that stress sickness is a stupid maladaptive response like oooohhh the numbers in my bank account aren't big enough so now my body is cooking itself. bruh.

[technicalthinker]

ok so I was already going through it after the preview but the ep doubled down and continued to explore buck's feelings in a way that was so surreal how messy and relatable and real it was. the way it portrayed his first gay dating experience as a bi adult: the nervousness and the overthinking and self-criticism and identity crisis and just mess that can come with it.

He is on-guard and ultra-aware. He is analyzing not just his surroundings but himself. He lies and hates it. He avoids telling Maddie, makes an effort of not saying it's a guy he dated, but when confronted he tries to downplay it: "Could be very much the point" VS "It shouldn't be though right". Because Buck knows that liking a guy isn't a big deal and should be normal etc but he feels and acts like a mess?? So he feels like a fraud. There are too many thoughts about expectations that clouds his thoughts. "I dont think you're a fraud, i just think that maybe you're not sure of your own feelings yet" Maddie says and it helps. The moment when Eddie makes that comment about him being single and he gets that distant look in his eyes and realizes this is the moment of no return as he embraces the words that he has been afraid to say out loud. The way the tension starts to loosen once it has been said, the way he can breathe. Buck deciding at the end to just allow himself to be and let himself crush on Tommy and see where that takes them, because he knows he likes Tommy, and that's enough.

[preggydump]

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

It's never going to happen bc I don't have the skill or the determination or the simple understanding to actually do it but lately I've been thinking about potential video essays on...I'm not even sure. Autistic joy? Trans joy? The sheer unique joy of being me and of being a human who thinks and feels and how that's different but the same as so many other people. Like I'll legit start plotting out scripts in my head for how I would explain it to people (which I do alot for special interests and such but rarely to explain Myself) and a big part of me would love to just. Talk. About how it feels to be Me. But I'm also very unlikely to do that lol

[orcelito]

Ok so I was wondering like

Top 0.005% of listeners. That's Pretty Damn Small. But I was wondering Just how small...

357.1k monthly listeners

0.005% of 357.1k is... just under 18...

Guys. I'm within the top 20 listeners for IAMX. Period. 🫣

[dovedwings]

getting to go back to being s*nnav*rstappen tomorrow… holy fuck. genuinely holy fuck.