#me: uhm. can we do this.

[torahtot]

ok. ok. everything is fine. picked a college and my dad wants me to wait and not enroll til saturday night or sunday while we do more research on loans (i dont like this idea i already know im going here and it's not like i have a better price anywhere else so why not just enroll now but ok) but then. then. finally. ill be finished

[wyrmswears]

i finished aai2 (one of these is not like the others)

[buwheal]

Unexpected but fair.

How long were we disconnected?

[randomminty]

Opened paint tool sai for the first time in 5 years immediately drew yuri

[anemonet]

hey has anyone seen the hero recently?

[ganondoodle]

so with echoes of wisdom .. i havent watched any of the trailers beyond the very first one and the thumbnails/screenshots and what others have said about it-

but with the world inside the rift being called "Welt des Nichts" aka "world of nothing/void" in german ('still' in english, for some reason) and demises title in french being "avatar of nothing" ... yeah my anxiety is shooting through the roof again

(hopefully you can be a little more forgiving for me being anxious/weird about it bc demise is my blorbo)

i had similar worries with totk, that werent proven true thankfully, but the darn book is making it all worse again with all those weird lore things the game doesnt even so much as hint at AND potential retcons- im in for a really rough time huh, not just stress in real life (more in tags.. its alot) but now about my specific hyperfixation from two things even (AND artblock still..)

weird as it may sound, i dont want demise to get more lore, partly bc i dont believe theyd do anything with him that i would like (given their track record) but much more importantly- the fact that he has this little lore about him is precisely one of the reasons why i fell in love with him, i tend to like characters that are neglected by the narrative, and his story being both so flat and already done meant i can be very creative with what i come up with for him without necessarily contradicting anything in canon (which is ... or was a big point of how i wrote destiny's story and lore, working with canon in a way that reframes it all without straight up ignoring it ... but i suppose i urgently need to let go of that and accept i spend alot of time working things that will go to waste :( ) AND not having to worry that there will be more stuff with him that would massively change not only what im writing but also potentially how i feel about him since the game he was briefly in was the oldest chronologically and ended with his death- i didnt expect them to mess with anything that far back and thought theyd just go forward and leave the timeline behind and wouldnt mess with it again, given how botw seemed to be a sort of 'fresh start' that seemingly regarded the past as the past that needs to rest and that the timeline was finally no longer a discussion if everythings unified through botw and one thing going forward

but i suppose i was very wrong with that .__.

right now the only thing that motivates me still is the left over determination and spite to work on my zelda comic, since i have never gotten this far and really want to get something done for once, but i cant lie that im feeling like i should pause all work on it too to wait and see waht the book and the new game will do .. either to determine if i still have the will to keep working on it after those things are out (my love for tloz has been taking alot of hits lately ..) or if i have to change stuff (mostly bc of my lore problem trying to not ignore it ..)

[a-list-of-moods]

stop telling people that voting doesn't matter stop it stop it

incremental change is frustrating and feels like it gets nothing done but it's how the american government works (for better or for worse) and if you get paralyzed by 'we need to revolt voting doesn't matter' that's one more effective vote for the fascists since it's one vote we lose.

I'd much rather have slow but tangible progress (or even just prevention of fascist progression) than everyone sitting around going 'let's wait for the revolution' when no revolution is likely to come while everything gets worse around us.

Obviously, still do whatever it is else to support the antifascist movement. Donate where you can (and do your research!) Go to protests if you feel safe doing so. But do all that AND vote.

[hplonesomeart]

Puzzlevison screenshot redraw!! On paper!! With water color!! Wahoo!!

I don’t have much credible experience with coloring traditional art—usually just doodling or sketching in my spare time for fun. But I’ve wanted to try expanding the different mediums I use and letting myself learn from them. It’s a nice change of pace and allows me to take a step back from responsibilities. And I’ve needed an excuse to keep working in this sketchbook so here we are!! I think in the end of this I might’ve treated the watercolors too similar to acrylic paints lol. Ah oh well all part of the ✨learning experience ✨

Also here have some goofy work behind-the-scenes progress photos

[every-sanji]

[passthroughtime]

yagami, WHY do you have to be such a bitch around kuwana. i'm going to strangle you.

(P.S.: he didn't tell kuwana that tesso said not to feel bad about it. obviously.)

[revasserium]

狐と蛍の物語 (the story of the fox and the firefly)

harrison; 4,064 words; fluff and angst a/n: for @violettduchess and @aquagirl1978's summer days, sultry nights event -- prompt "fireflies" (obviously); i'm also gonna say this counts for my 31 days of au prompt -- reincarnation!au; inspired by hotarubi no mori e and catheryn m valente's deathless and honestly, i'm so proud and happy with this one that i'd encourage you to read it even if you have no idea of the fandom/character. u__u i would love, love, love to know what you guys think!

once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there lived a girl who only danced to the firefly’s light and a fox who could tell nothing but lies.

01.

for as long as you can remember, there’s always been the wood. and it has always been behind your house, it’s leaves and branches foreboding in the winter wind, and somehow less so in the simmer of mid-summer afternoons, when the sunlight dappled light across the soft, forest floor. it isn’t a very large wood, but it’s a wood nevertheless, and deserves all the respect and fear afforded to bigger woods in faraway places. woods that warn of teeth and terrors, woods that hide both dreams and monsters.

you’d been wandering the wood from when you were a little girl, and to you, there’s not a single rock you don’t know, a single tree you haven’t tried to climb. and the forest knows you, as forests do the people who frequent them, and it welcomes you with open arms, it cradles you to its chest, whispers stories into your ears, carves itself open to show you it’s secrets —

“you’re late.”

you crinkle your nose at the familiar voice, letting out a huffing breath as you drop your picnic basket in the middle of the small, sun-lit clearing, taking your time with laying out the checked picnic blanket and two cups and saucers for tea, and finally, pulling out a tray of confections, covered by a thin, linen baking towel.

“no, i’m not! you just want me to think i am so i’ll give you more than half of the sweets.”

a boy settles over the picnic blanket, cocking his head at you before you narrow your eyes.

“well? isn’t that true?”

“ahh… i wonder if it is…” he says, but you can hear the grin in his voice, even through the material of his fox-faced mask, which, after a few more seconds of posturing, he pushes up onto his forehead. he shakes out his milk-tea hair and slates you a poison-ivy grin. you know that grin like you know the woods— and you know the woods like you know the backs of your own hands. better, even, you think sometimes.

because for as long as there’s been the woods, and as long as you have wandered it’s depths, the boy with the fox-faced mask has always been there.

“there were fresh strawberries at farmer’s market today,” you say, setting up the tea service as you nudge the opened picnic basket towards the boy with a foot. he peers in with wide, curious eyes before letting out a soft noise of contentment as he reaches in to pull out a slice of freshly baked strawberry cream cake.

“your grandmama makes the best pastries in the world,” he says, and there’s such sincerity in his voice that for a moment, you almost believe him.

but you nod and take the compliment in stride, “she sure does!”

he digs in with gusto even when you tut that the tea hasn’t steeped properly, but you laugh as he smears a large dollop of whipped cream across his cheeks. you point it out to him with a dainty finger, and as always, you fight the urge to reach over and wipe it off for him. instead, you hold yourself still and sigh as he finally gets to it, smudging a bit into his hair in the process.

“clumsy fox,” you giggle, pressing a hand up to your lips.

“picky girl,” he snipes back, but there’s that full, sated grin on his own lips as he leans back, his elbows propped up on the soft grasses of the clearing.

after a moment of pleasant silence during which the leaves sang on their trees and the grasses swayed beneath the breeze, the boy turns towards you.

“so. no dancing today?”

you turn your head towards him before casting your eyes up towards the still bright blue sky.

“you know it’s not time yet.”

the boy heaves a melodramatic sigh, sound much bigger and larger than his 14-year old body should be able to hold.

“ah… right, right — because you can —”

“— only dance by the fireflies’ light — yep!”

the boy regards you with an imperious sort of look before breaking into a fit of bright, open laughter.

“you’re the strangest girl i’ve ever met!”

“just you saying that tells me it’s not true,” you stick out your tongue at him, even as heat washes up into your cheeks.

the boy shrugs, lying back down on the picnic basket, “i don’t always have to lie, y’know.”

and it’s your turn to regard him with the imperious look, and, a the cock of a singular eyebrow, his lips tug into a lopsided grin. his eyes flash, the color of budding spring.

“liar,” you say, but you’re smiling too as you lie back down to watch the clouds pass.

he makes no sound to correct you.

02.

once, you’d asked him what his name is and he simply shook his head and said —

“call me whatever you’d like.”

“but i want to call you by your name.”

“what’s in a name anyway?”

“uhm… nothing’s in it but…” you’d frowned then, your eight year old mind spinning to try and catch up with this strange, strange question and this strange, strange boy.

“see? so why should it matter what my name is? just… call me whatever!”

but you’d only frowned hard enough for him to roll his eyes.

“fine then — uhm — what’s the name of the current prince?”

you’d blinked, “harry.”

“then call me that.”

“but is that your name?”

“well, now it is.”

you hadn’t been convinced but you liked it better than not calling him anything at all.

“harry, then,” you’d said, smiling. and the boy — harry — had smiled too, slipping his fox-faced mask back in place as he led you further into the forest.

03.

“y’know…” harry says, his voice light as the sun dips beneath the horizon line, leaving behind a blaze of reds and pinks. you turn your head, eyes catching on the shape of him, inked out against the dying light.

“you’re the only person i’ve ever met who’s wanted to be cursed.”

you take a long breath and turn your eyes back up to the bleeding sky.

“well. you’re cursed, and you seem just fine to me,” you try to keep your voice strong, resolute and steady. grandmama had always said that if you keep your voice strong, people are more willing to believe your words. you wonder if that’s why harry’s voice is always soft, always lilting, his words slippery as moss-covered stone.

“yeah, but you can’t even touch me,” he says, and for once, his voice is harsh, his words sharp and hard as broken glass.

“that’s okay though — once i get my own curse, i’ll be able to touch you, right?”

harry fights back the urge to turn, to take you by the shoulders and shake you till you push him away. he wants to scream, to howl at the moon like the mother wolves and the hungry cubs that live in the heart of the wood. he wants to run through the woods, crash into things, climb up the trees and shake off all their branching leaves.

but he can’t, and so he doesn’t.

instead, he turns to look at you and look at you and look at you.

he wonders if it’s a strange thing, to like looking at someone so much, to find something new about a face every single time it’s looked upon — the wisps of hair fallen loose to frame your face from the velvet ribbons holding it back, the curve of your button nose, the dip of your cupid’s bow. he wonders if this is a normal thing, the thick weight of it in this chest, the truth of his curse sitting heavy on his tongue.

“yeah… probably,” he says — and the lie is smooth as milk, sweet as just-spun sugar.

“good. then we won’t have long to wait, hm?”

04.

there’s a story, so you’ve been told, of a fox that lives in the woods — and the fox can tell nothing but lies, lest the truth cut open it’s throat. and when it bleeds, because even monsters bleed (oh especially monsters), it will bleed in blue and silver, which everyone knows is the color of magic.

“but why would telling the truth kill it?” you’d asked, your eyes wide and round as the full-bellied moon.

your grandmama had sighed, rocking you in her lap as the forest outside shivers and shakes with the steps and breaths of creatures unseen.

“that’s what curses do, my sweetest… they’re unfair things, they are. and they don’t like to make a lot of sense.”

and that had been that. she’d moved onto a nicer story, a sweeter story, a story that was not so much truth and mostly lies — because the truth, as your grandmama had said, is sharp and unfair and makes so very little sense.

lies are much, much the better for the makings of stories.

05.

he has never complimented you on your dancing, not even once — not in all the years you’ve been dancing for him, by the light of a million and one fireflies.

you’d been eight when you made the promise, it’s been ten years since then.

and at eighteen, you wonder how many more years it’ll be before the moon or the forest or whatever it is that chooses people to curse will take pity on you.

it’s just after sunset, and you’d just finished your customary sunday afternoon picnic. harry is sprawled out on the picnic blanket, his fox-faced mask lying in the soft, long grasses, an arm thrown over his eyes. you wonder if he’s asleep, though you don’t think you’ve ever seen him fall asleep, not in all the time you’ve known him.

“music, please…” you announce to the clearing, and after a long pause, as if the forest itself is coming to life, the wind picks up — the leaves rustle on their branches, the birds sweep up into a twitter wingbeats and song, the grasses around the clearing hish and hush the thrumming baseline to a music that only you and harry and the forest can hear.

slowly, harry pushes himself up, making a show of rubbing his eyes, and in the darkness you can only see the shape of him.

you don’t see the prickle of tears at the edge of his eyes as he wipes them away.

instead, you close your own eyes and wait.

and wait.

and then — at the first flicker of a firefly’s light, you lift your hands and start to dance.

06.

once, you’d asked him how he’d gotten cursed in the first place.

“it’s a long story,” he’d said.

“i’ve got a long time,” you countered.

he’d crinkled his nose, pursing his lips as the pair of you hopped over a narrow stream, him watching as you teetered on the edge of the water.

“hm… well, if you do something a ton of times in the wood… the wood decides that that’s all your good for, and it becomes your curse!”

you’d blinked up at him from over your shoulder, a soft smear of mud on your cheeks.

“oh… it’s that easy?”

“easy?”

“i mean, to get a curse.”

he’d narrowed his eyes, “why would you want a curse?”

you’d straightened up, pressing your palms down your rather sullied dress.

“because — you said that i can’t touch you cause i’m human, right?”

“uh-huh…” harry had nodded, uncertain of where your child-logic had taken you.

“but other cursed things can touch you, right? like the wolves and the shadows and the queen of ravens.”

harry bit his lips. but you seemed to have taken his silence for consent and happily skipped off further into the forest. he’d never corrected you even as he heaved another world-weary sigh and followed after you. because technically, you hadn’t been totally wrong.

and his curse was only that he couldn’t correct you.

07.

your mind wanders as you begin to dance, and these days, it’s been doing a lot of that — wandering. so your grandmama says that it’s a part of growing up — learning when to let your mind wander and when to reign it back in, hold it on a tighter leash and tell it to wander no more. it’s a blessing to be able to let your mind wander, and so you do.

it’s just that these days, you can’t help but notice that it’s less of wandering and more of… well, a straight-shot descent to a well-known destination. and you know from a whole childhood of actual wandering that if you know the way and you know what you’ll find at the end, then it’s not wandering at all.

it’s just going.

but still, you let your mind go where it wants, and lately, it’s been going and going and going... to harry.

harry and his soul-soft laughter, harry and his knife-edge smiles, harry and his loose, lethargic movements, unhurried and always so certain. back when you were both still children, he’d led you through the forest with nothing but his voice, spouting out random facts that were much too outlandish to be true, and later, when you were both a bit older (and you’d long since memorized every bit of forest there was to memorize), he’d walk alongside you in companionable silence.

you knew his favorite trees, his favorite flowers, his favorite birds and colors, his favorite season, his favorite sweet, his favorite fruit and so many others.

and still, it feels as if you don’t know him at all, even though you’re certain he knows everything there is to know about you.

except…

you spin out on the long grasses, the light of a million and one fireflies dancing across your skin, dancing with you, singing with you as the forest does. and above you, a crescent moon cuts a sinister smile into a lonely, starless night.

years later, you’d wonder if the night had known — if the wood had known (of course, of course it had known, because there are no secrets the woods do not know, no secrets the waning moon doesn’t keep from the sleeping earth), if the entire world had conspired against you and for you that night.

when you finish dancing and the last of the fireflies flicker down to rest on the long, soft grasses, you’re breathless with exertion, luminous with exaltation and drunk on the song of the forest and a million and one lightless stars.

in the middle of the clearing, harry is smiling, you can see it even from here, and for the first time since you’d danced for him the very first time, he brings his hands together and claps.

“that was… beautiful,” he says, and his voice is deeper now, supple and sweet with the night air.

“th-thanks! phew — i really think that might do it,” you say, plopping down on the picnic blanket next to him, spreading wide your arms and staring up at the velveteen sky above you.

08.

once, you’d been told another story, though you don’t quite recall who you’d heard it from. maybe your grandmama, and maybe the old man who sits in the village square after all the longest days of the year, smoking his pipe and telling his stories.

“do you know why the cursed forest creatures can’t touch humans?”

“why?” a village boy had asked before you had the chance to.

“because… if a cursed creature touches human flesh, the cursed creature will die.”

“oh…” you said, clutching your hands to your chest, and you’d never really thought about dying. because really, what ten year old in their right mind would? but you knew of the concept from when grandmama talked about grandpapa — how he was there one day and then the next day he just… wasn’t.

“he died in his sleep,” she’d said, a tone of sadness in her voice that you’d never heard there before and wished you’d never have to hear again, “it was the best way to go.”

you’d wondered then if there’s really such thing as a “best” way to go. wouldn't the “best” thing to be not going at all?

“then… do the cursed creatures get to live forever?” you asked, before the village boy could cut in.

the old man took a long sip from his pipe and blew out a few concentric rings of smokes before coughing and waving it all away.

“no… you see, if the cursed creatures get to pass on their curses, they’d get to be reincarnated into being a human once more.”

09.

“do you… really want to be cursed?” harry asks as the pair of you share in the silence after your dance.

you suck in a long breath before pushing yourself up to sit in front of him, careful to keep your knees from bumping his.

“of course i do! it’s… it’s what i’ve been trying to do since i was like — eight!”

“but… why?” and harry’s voice is small, smaller than you’ve ever heard it, even though now, his eighteen year old body should carry a much heavier, harder sound.

“because,” you say, resolute as you’d always been, “once i’m cursed, i’ll be able to touch you.”

“and why… is that so important to you?”

harry casts his eyes towards you; you catch his gaze with yours, holding it steady. and in that moment, you mind lets go of the story that the old man told you. because it was a long time ago, and the story was so, so far away. and sometimes, the mind chooses which truths it wants to listen to, which truths it wants to believe in.

sometimes, it chooses truths that don’t look like truths from the outside in, but from the inside out — they’re the truest things to ever be true.

like this one —

“because i want to touch you. because… it’s what i’ve wanted since i was a little girl. because… sometimes, i think i want to do more than touch you — sometimes —” your voice catches on a hitched breath, lost somewhere in your chest, somewhere between your heart and your throat.

but then, darkness descends over your vision and it takes you a long moment to realize that you’re staring at the inside of a mask, thin but solid — the fox-faced mask that harry always wears.

and then pressure, and warmth, right where the fox’s dagger-carved grin usually is, so close to your own lips you can feel the heat.

it holds for a long, long moment, and then it’s gone.

the light returns as harry tugs the mask from you, grinning that teasing, lopsided grin of his, though there’s something about it tonight that makes your heart seize.

“tell me, one more time…” he says, and his voice is jagged with something that sounds painful and true and so, so terrible.

“i — i want the curse…” you say, before you really realize what you’re saying, and it takes you a moment to realize that this too, is the truth.

“okay then… it’s yours.”

and he leans in to press his lips to yours.

the truth, harry realizes, is always bitter, and harsh, and much too sharp. when he pulls back, he presses his palms to yours and lets the moon wash the clearing in blue and silver. you gasp as you feel the magic creeping into your bones, tugging you under, dragging you through the cracks in the world even as harry is tugged away from you back to the world of the living.

“w-was this all a lie?” you ask, because inside you, your heart is fighting for it’s last few beats.

“no,” harry says, his voice is pained, and his expression even more so, because every truth he tells cuts him a little deeper, and he feels his throat constrict over the words, “your dance really was beautiful… and…”

he swallows hard, feeling the knife-edge of this one final truth slicing through him, sharp as moonlight, sweet as the lightless stars.

“i love you. please… don’t forget me.”

and already, you can feel the truth starting to hurt, starting to constrict inside you like a curse. but still, you force it from you as harry flickers and fades along with the light of a million and one firefly lights.

“i — i won’t.”

10.

“but how exactly do you transfer a curse?” the village boy asked, his voice loud and jarring.

the old man takes another long sip of his pipe, puffs out a few more smoke rings.

“through a kiss,” he said.

you blinked. a kiss?

“ew!” the village boy recoiled then, shrinking back from the thought of kissing — because that’s what children are taught to do at such grown-up concepts as kissing.

you, on the other hand, you stayed right where you are, but a frown has creased your tiny, child-like brow.

“and the trick,” the old man continues, his smile going wide and a little lascivious, “is getting someone who will take their curse willingly… to accept the kiss.”

01.

for as long as harry can remember, there has always been the wood. and in the wood, there’s always been a girl with a fox-painted mask who danced to the light of the fireflies.

once, when he’d gone exploring (even though his grandpapa had warned him time and time again about going into the wood by himself), he’d nearly run into her and she’d cocked her head when he’d fallen face-first near the bank of a tiny stream, smearing mud across his cheeks.

“you’re strange little boy,” the girl said — and she could be no more than his age, harry thinks.

“and you’re a weird little girl,” he counters, his eyes catching on the bright red of the fox’s painted mouth.

there is magic at work here, harry knows, though he doesn’t know what kind, and all he really wants is to explore the woods behind his house, to know all there is to know of the world, and perhaps — he thinks as you turn and make your way deeper into the forest — to one day hold the hand of the girl with the fox-faced mask.

but that’s a wish for another day, he decides as he follows after you, jogging to catch up and ask for your name.

“ah… what’s in name,” you say, you voice light and languid, even as he frowns, “you can call me whatever you like.”

02.

once, harry had asked his grandpapa what the truest feeling in the whole wide world is.

and his grandpapa had answered —

“that, harry, would be falling in love…”

“falling in love?”

“yes, my dear boy — and the thing about love is that it’s like a curse… but it’s also like a blessing.”

“but… how can a thing be a curse and a blessing?”

then, his grandpapa had smiled, a smile that is starlight and wolfsong and all the secrets the forest ever has to tell.

“because we are doomed to always, always fall in love, my boy — and it will always, always be like handing someone and knife and asking them to cut open your throat.”

[mirrortouchedsea]

wip wednesday

Loosely based on @sausagepastry 's lighthouse keeper/merman au

Once the boat was beached on the rocks, Niki scrambled out and pulled it closer so that it wouldn’t get washed away. Kohaku should have been keeping an eye on him and would be down to help in a moment, but Niki was still baffled by the uh, tail, and now that he wasn’t distracted by the rocking of the boat, the fact that there were gills and fins on the merman in front of him. 

“Hey! Wake up!” He tried shouting and shaking the merman. It had grabbed onto the boat out in the water and looked like it was breathing as much as Niki could tell. How something that may or may not have both gills and air breathing lungs would be able to show he was breathing, Niki wasn’t entirely sure, nor was he sure he wanted to know that answer. 

“Niki-han, did you find anythi--oh what is…” Kohaku came to a stop next to Niki, looking at the merman. “Please tell me I’m seein’ things.” 

“I don’t think so, Kohaku-chan. He won’t wake up but I don’t want to leave him in the storm either.” Niki shook the merman’s shoulder again, gently slapping its face to no avail. He pressed a finger to its neck to search for a pulse but he didn’t even know if that would yield any results. There was a faint throbbing though, something like a heartbeat. Could they stay out of water? If only the damn thing were awake and could answer their questions. 

Another lightning strike jolted them back to reality. “Kohaku-chan, start running the bath and get the stove heated. I’ll try and get him in the house.” Kohaku nodded and ran back inside, while Niki contemplated the best way to get the merman back. There was a wheelbarrow somewhere that would probably work well enough to get him up to the door but trying to wheel it up the steps even when it was empty was a challenge. His stomach growled and Niki decided to just grab it and maybe he would just dump it through the door and he and Kohaku could carry it to the bathroom. Yeah, that would work well enough. 

[juicedbeetle]

I just love when he does creacher shit like this so much

[crimeronan]

funniest thing is people just unanimously deciding that characters are siblings and despite it not being canon like at all, if anyone ships them together it's literally incest and they're all disgusting freaks who should be burned at the stake. it's SO silly

i remember when i first looked into luz-hunter art i was super startled to see how insistent the siblings thing was in wider fandom, and even MORE startled to see that romantic shipping was often treated as incest. it wasn't until i remembered that most people ship things monogamously that i realized the ENTIRE "luz/hunter is incest" thing Literally Only Happened because of luz/amity shippers feeling threatened & needing to make luz/hunter Problematic. and that to make luz/hunter Problematic, they had to reach for incest because luz & hunter have in common literally all the same things that luz & amity do.

like i legit FORGOT that monogamy was a thing and was sitting here like "but..... but hunter/luz/amity just MAKES SENSE......???? WHY ARE PEOPLE SO ANGRY....."

bitch. it's the compulsory monogamous ship wars.

Duh.

[beyblaiddyd]

The genderbend poll really does make me sad like why and how are so many trans people still so fixated on this element of internet culture that we haven't been able to escape it for years.

Like I don't see how people can't understand that it is fundamentally cissexist to treat men and women as opposite categories with defined enough traits that you can meaningfully Bend them along a line.

When you ask the question "what would this character look like if he was a woman" and your answer is to draw the character with a slightly slimmer face and give her breasts then even if you keep her "masculine" and give her short hair you have still engaged in an act of transphobia.

When you look at this question through the transgender lens, you should already know the answer: gender has no inherent tie to appearance or presentation and so the character as they are could already be a man or woman (or both, or any other gender, which also highlights the other problem with genderbends, which is that they again flatten gender down into a binary that can be flipped. You never see someone genderbend a man into an agender person or a woman into a bigender person, I wonder if that says something about the ideology that underpins genderbends?). Any changes you make speak to what you think defines gender.

There are so many more interesting, varied, dynamic ways to explore character gender and presentation in this world without doing this casually cissexist thing that people for some reason can't let go of

I at least kind of understand it when it's the mental exercise of "if the company had designed this character as a different gender from the start how would they look" but when it's just "I want to see how this character would look as the Opposite Gender" it's like oh man we can't even get past level one huh. We can't even clear the minimum bar of opposite genders not existing

[sp1resong]

wow god public school really did traumatize me didn't it