#never be afraid to start over

[feehippielove]

Abusers love victims and hate survivors. When he realized that I wouldn't stand for his abuse - I was forced to flee.

[lucalicatteart]

A new sculpture! Finally... I feel like I never sculpt anymore since I'm always sick or have some 500 other things going on or projects to finish, but I'm trying to schedule time to do it more often this year hopefully..! Just a generic fantasy creature as usual, but did try making the eyes a little more sparkly this time.. hrmm..

[mugwot]

i can do what i want and i want a joyous davepeta pfp happy pride and dont forget to leave the cookies out for your local queers and faggots

a transparent version to put your own flags in, go crazy go stupid, please dont erase my name

[ottiliere]

hello! ur posts on the vagus nerve and its connections to digestions have encouraged me to do a lil mini dissertation thingy kinda focused on it/around it, ur big thread on PVT and everything really piqued my interest when i read it and i just held onto it for like a year or smthing until like last week when i started the project. Ik u said recently in one of ur posts i believe that ur not going to post the big dirk PVT post and im not here to be like yo post it because i also think u said that ur kinda moving away from like hs/dirky stuff rn ?? (im forgetting if i saw that sorry) but yeah i just wanted to say thank u etc etc, like ive never done an ask before so sorry if this is phrased weirdly but ur blog is just like one of those blogs that fundamentally changed how i view certain things in life for the better lol, like whether its ur beautiful representations / depictions of mental health in like just beautifully painted art (seriously the way u make it look like idk how to word it cartoony/really 2d but then it stands out against the background + if u zoom in and see the tiny pixel details == it makes me mad) or just like the huggeee long form posts that i like to chew on and save cuz theres so many details that AFFAAT like the way you talk abt the topics u portray has made me concious of how i would want to do so in the same way ig u get me. anyway this got really long and idk if i come across coherently, but ur just a random person on the internet whos art and written thoughts that u decide to share makes me happy when i see it == makes me pace around my room and distract me from this fat essay lmao so tldr: i really appreciate what u do + i hope like that ur doing well and that u keep arting and thoughting no matter what it is that u choose to focus on

(uve made me comitted to reading jthm, playing psychonauts and giving jjba w/ dio another go lmao) 🫶🫶

Hello! I’m sorry this reply is coming so late, this ask in particular is very sweet and has stuck out to me.

I’m really happy to have introduced you to PVT, this is something I’ve heard from a few different people on here and it’s very sweet… I did my thesis on it in college and the time really flew by while working on it, things you don't think could possibly attributed to "nerve issues" being nerve issues is always an eye-opener, isn't it? being able to research things that interest you & access information in general really is a privilege in this day and age.

“The topics [I] portray” are very important to me, so it’s heartening when others take interest in spite of the obvious deterrents. A lot of what I love making art about is unpalatable to most, and while I do understand the reasons for that on principle, it can make things feel a little insular. I genuinely believe there’s a lot of value in depicting tableaus of misery.

The last year has brought a lot of very unforeseen changes, and my life is quite different from when I initially made this blog to post about him! That’s also part of why I’ve been so sparse here…though I’m working to change that quite soon. I love sharing my work, and I’ve had the privilege of meeting some truly wonderful people through this website. That said…with where I’m at now, I’m not sure I’ll be posting the Dirk essay anytime soon, I’m afraid.

I’ve undertaken a few ongoing projects, one of which in particular is an original project I plan on sharing publicly here hopefully within the next month or so. I hope it’s something you & anyone else who’s stuck around with me here will enjoy, but failing that, I’ve really enjoyed working on it thus far.

Thank you for the sweet ask, take care, and good luck with your project!

[fiona-fififi]

...

[whynotimtired]

Thinking about how there was like half a day where mike knew it was requited....

[jigensnacks]

okay okay hear me out

ima put this under a read more because i know there are people around who are generally uncomfortable with content relating to alcohol

but! I had a revelation about Jigen and his alcohol preferences.

Disclaimer, I am mildly tipsy as I am writing this. I may or may not get lost in my own thoughts, so please bear with me here, alright?

Content warnings: alcohol (of course), alcohol abuse, maybe more. I dunno at the moment.

Okay. Jigen's alcohol preferences.

At first I couldn't wrap my head around Jigen's appreciation of wine, like that guy's a borderline alcoholic with the way he drinks (which I extend into full-blown alcoholism in my writing, I'll get to this later on), he cannot possibly like wine, wine is weak, why would he even like the stuff?

I came at the issue from the point of view of someone who prefers liquor. Stuff like vodka, whiskey, borovička. You know, the heavy artillery. Poisons that dull the mind and destroy the liver.

But I've tried wine recently. Got the explanation of the ritual of wine-drinking.

And then it suddenly clicked.

Wine has its purpose in Jigen's toolkit of escapism. You have the cigarettes, a way to remind himself that he's not in danger, that he's out of the fight and just vibing, passing time, relaxing. Then there's scotch, the first-aid kit, when everything is too much and he's antsy and nervous and he needs to dull the edge. It's the painkiller, in a way. The glue to mend those invisible wounds, the cause and solution of all of world's problems.

And then there is wine.

It's not to be wielded like a sledgehamer known as liquor. Wine is a delicate tool, when liquor is too much, when he wants to relax, but he doesn't want to dull his senses too much. There aren't any demons to suffocate, he doesn't want to get drunk, his only intention is just to sit down, lean back, have a moment to himself.

To Jigen, wine is like classical music. It's not something to binge, but to immerse himself in, soak in it, have slow, ginger sips. Relish in the taste, the warmth. There's a reason the ancient Romans and Greeks had a god of wine.

Now, how does this tie to my 'Jigen is a barely functional alcoholic' headcanon?

It's the antithesis of liquor. Liquor is the main poison, Jigen pours it into himself to drown out the noise in his head, the lingering pains, to keep his limbs heavy and limp to keep himself from doing something worse. It's his salvation and his downfall, it frees the demons lurking in his mind, yet it keeps them docile, harmless. It allows his mind to swim along, face his fears, it frees his feelings... but it's also a pathway to destruction. With his thoughts and feelings freed comes a different danger - self-destruction. Liquor becomes not only the tool of healing, but one of destruction too. When a heist goes off the rails and they make it home, when the crushing weight of failure sets in and Lupin looks at him with a gaze full of apologies, that's when Jigen grabs his poison of choice and takes his anger out on himself. While Goemon subjects himself to gruelling training to make sure he doesn't fail again, Jigen instead drinks himself mute, lies on the ground staring emptily at the ceiling, reliving every past mistake. That's the start of the cycle, he falls into the drink, struggles to get out of it for months on end. Until his body starts showing the withdrawal symptoms when he's sobering up, the headaches, the feeling of a thousand ants marching all over his skin, the shadow people staring at him, the music plaing from the walls, the muffled conversations from other rooms that never happened, the way his hands shake...

Wine is a way for him to pace himself. His philosophy around wine is basically if someone drinks wine like liquor, there ain't no use hanging around them. Jigen doesn't want wine to become just another tool of thorough self-annihilation. Jigen sees wine as a way to regain control again. It's much weaker than liquor (if we ignore port wine, but I suspect he wouldn't like such wines), and, unlike the heavy artillery he relies on, wine has personality. While liquor is the path of scorched earth, wine is so much calmer. It has a soul, personality, it evolves like classical music. It has elaborate constructions, just swap the musical tones for taste ones.

He reaches for the wine when he doesn't want to fall into that horrible spiral.

Wine - along with food - marks the line between functionality and destruction.

Wine isn't something he can drink quickly. He tried, and found out it only makes him sick.

So he grabs a bottle of a four-year-old italian merlot. Pours himself a glass. Takes a sip. Feels the slight sourness at the back of his tongue. The woody tones playing at the rest of it. The sweetness at the very tip.

He stares down the beast. Sleeping, yet aware. And while he stays with the wine, it'll remain asleep.

I don't know where I was going with this. I blame the wine.

[sysig]

You learn to live with it, learn to love it if you can (Patreon)

[quirkle2]

oh nooo that's quite a bummer :( but i'm very glad that i helped brightening up your day :") tbh your writing brightens up my day too (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

AND WAIT I'VE BEEN ACTUALLY QUITE THINKING ABOUT WHETHER ZOMBIE MOB HAS FOUGHT OFF A ZOMBIE WHEN I ASKED IF HE HAS EVER BITTEN SOMEONE and since you brought it up, well, would be okay to ask about the details of how it went 👁️👁️ (also him fighting off a fellow zombie to protect tome got me sobbing)

- 🪻

aww im glad my silly little words brighten ur day!! ur so sweet :]

and yes, it went horribly <3! tome prolly wasn't paying attention as closely as she should've been and got herself surrounded by a crowd. to be clear, that's not Always dangerous, since zombies arent like,, after ur brains in this constantly. but these zombies did look quite hungry, and human or not, she looked like a good meal,,

she had wandered off a bit from mob n ritsu, but mob heard the commotion first. tome has a big fucking baseball bat in this au that she likes to swing around, but a baseball bat can only get u so far in terms of self defense. she thins the horde but there's simply too many of them

mob lets exactly One zombie grab her and yank her toward them before he goes ballistic

watching zombies fight is a lot closer to watching wild animals fight than anything else, and it gets quite horrid sometimes. since their bites aren't rly "dangerous" to each other beyond the typical Oh No a Chunk of Flesh is Gone (not even painful for them, since their nerves r.. less than functional), the fight is a lot more close up and gruesome than a fight against a zombie and a human would be. humans usually back away from zombies immediately and try not to touch them at all in fear of getting bitten; zombies don't need to care abt that

most of the horde realizes that this meal isn't going to be easy and they wander off, but a few more hungry, more desperate ones try to rip into mob's throat at the first sign of defiance. it's not exactly a fair fight; it's like 1 against 4, so he's sorta bound to lose

thankfully ritsu shows up and shoots two of them down (he's Terrified of shooting mob by accident, but either way he'll probably die, so) and tome gets the last one with a good swing to the head. ritsu rushes to mob and is horrified by the amount of blood dripping from his neck and his arm; tome is equally as shocked, but she's mostly thinking, "ive Never seen a zombie defend a human before"

mob's neck is thankfully mostly just scraped up and clawed, but there Is some gruesome punctures where canines sank in and tugged. it's a lot worse along his arm that's bitten and gouged beyond belief. he loses a lot of blood here, but the whole nerves-no-longer-work thing is a blessing in disguise atm; he'd be in a lot of pain otherwise. while ritsu and tome are patching him up w shaky hands he simply glares beyond their shoulders like he thinks he's still in danger, even when they tighten the bandages. it's like he barely notices what they’re doing

his strangely alert behavior makes them think abt the possibility that maybe mob Knows he could've easily been shredded apart there, and he's a little scared and worked up abt it. the only reason he managed to fight as long as he did without dying is prolly bc the other zombies weren't as well-fed as mob—they were kinda weak and shaky from days of no food, but mob has humans taking care of him and keeping him fed 24/7

they're all shaken up by it pretty good.. tome is still reeling from the fact that mob defended her so valiantly, and ritsu is quietly horrified by the idea of another zombie killing mob instead of a human. he doesn't know which is worse

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

I was just listening to a song I used to love while we were friends. I listened to it so often, we talked so often, it became the background music to our relationship.

I'm listening to it while I knit. I often forget that I started knitting because of you. I remembered tonight. It's strange, I never knitted anything for you. I've knitted for other loved ones, rarely for myself, but never for you. I remembered you showing me the amazing things you made, and I wished I could get to that level of skill. But at that time, you had to explain to me how to purl because I couldn't get it.

Everything reminds me of you in a terrible way. Everything I do is an echo of you. I started painting so that I could paint for you. I started knitting to bond with you. I hear your voice in the music I listen to. You're haunting the things that I love. Will I ever make a brush stroke or stitch without you on my mind?

[marsbotz]

ninjago fandom when ppl stop mischaracterising wu as a one note shitty old guy and realise hes a complex character with just as much of his own trauma as everyone else in the show

[tariah23]

Just got back in from work not too long ago…. I rly want to get back to older DMs I’m so sorry forgive me I’m so ugly

[dolokhoded]

epic the musical can die by my blade i don't think there's anything actually wrong with i'm just abhorred by the amount of tenors and think everyone sounds like the vocal equivalent of an iphone face

[vaugarde]

i get the frustration with so many villains now getting treatment like “oh they had a sucky childhood so actually you need to feel bad for them and not hold them accountable for their actions” but the counter of “this person was born evil and cant ever grow and its pathetic to assume that they can, also people cant be redeemed no matter what and this is fantastic writing actually” is so exhausting. 

[agnesandhilda]

I work to support my family. like, in the literal sense. my mother's pay as a schoolteacher(!) is not enough to support her me and my brother so she regularly takes +$100 dollars out of my checking account just to afford groceries. she's very insistent on repaying it when she's able, but we both know that this is a necessity for us. we don't discuss the arrangement much---she is nothing if not ashamed to have to lean on her young daughter for support and I am nothing if not unwilling to ask her about it, which imo just makes it more stressful on my end. I carry a level of responsibility in my household that is not negotiated or clearly set out for me because of the same financial/class strain and shame that makes me having a job and earning an income necessary to my family. this pseudo-breadwinner status also substantially intensifies the resentment I feel towards my brother, who has a history of episodes of explosive rage (like our father) and who has further increased the burden on our already-poor finances several times (by breaking a door in our rental house, stealing from our mother, and taking one of our cars without warning at night and driving it until it broke down. the car alone set us at least two thousand dollars back). and my brother is like, mentally ill. I get it! I know that! but so am I! I'm young and upset and on top of that I carry the weight of being the second adult in the household! and you don't see me stealing and screaming and breaking things! anyway last night I was feeling especially resentful of my brother due to insomniamisery (which makes me more upset in general) and today I asked my mother if, since my brother is employed again, she also expects him to contribute his wages to keeping our house running, and she said that she doesn't. because he has no money. because he spends it all as soon as he earns it. he has a higher hourly wage than me. I save money specifically so enough will be available to my mother if she needs it, and I have done this since I took on the second-breadwinner role. I don't even know if my brother knows I do this. it would be awkward to tell him, yes, embarrassing to admit that your pay as a schoolteacher is so dogshit because of a cruel and awful government that you need to supplement your income with that of your children to stay afloat, but is it better when you do it to your daughter?

[gizdathemxel]

my hot take on purity culture is that nobody knows how to be normal about sex :3

(tw for sex, puritanism, pedophila (?) [not explicit tbh], and shitty discourse)

call me a puriteen n all but like has it not bothered you to ever think of why so many young people are sex negative (definitely not a culture and internet that puts us in sexual situations when we are far too young and far too uncomfortable) ? has it ever bothered u to ask why so many young people are not performing critical media analysis (definitely not a lackluster education and culture that dissuades us from thinking deeper about the media we read) ? when I was a minor I could not tell you how many people i knew (me included) struggled with porn addiction bc we were exposed to pornography when we were FAR too young. young people are taught to be ashamed of and fearful of sex while simultaneously having their sex lives being put on blast 24/7 for others to jack off to, and you expect us to NOT act out about it?

like yes, you are absolutely right that sex (esp queer sex) is a totally normal thing and that you should be allowed to write wtv you want to write and share it among other like-minded people! yes you’re absolutely right that sex is a huge part of queer history that has been historically wiped away and that needs to be preserved !! i will not argue that puritans won’t jump at any chance to censor and shame and discriminate against anyone they deem a deviant!!! that is true!!

but you cannot expect a bunch of young people, still educating themselves, still figuring out their sexual identity in a world that shames and sexualizes them, still figuring out how to truly interact w media to have already know that. you don’t have to educate them but like there’s no need to be like “erm…minors amirite 😒” when a block will suffice

it’s so ridiculously revisionist to act like the internet is ‘sanitized’ or is perfectly filtered out so that minors stay in minor spaces and adults stay in adult spaces. there are people posting porn on tiktok, on twitter, on tumblr, on every fucking platform one can think of (including youtube). it is truly not that hard to encounter adult material even when you’re a minor. people will gladly send you porn or similarly graphic stuff even if ur a minor. you literally couldn’t have looked up mlp on GOOGLE back in the late 2000s/2010s and not be shown mlp porn. there’s an infamous porn video of mlaatr where the main (16yo) character gets raped by rock creatures, and it looks JUST like the show’s art style. so it’s very likely that there’s a generation of people whose very 1st sexual exposure was watching their fave characters be placed in inappropriate sexual content when they were children. so yay learning about sex thru bastardization!!

and combine that with young people who have never actually been taught how to explore their sexuality and instead learned “if ur even horny for a minute you will go to hell and die” ur going to get ill-adjusted young people who do not know wtf theyre doing. u are going to get people who are going to bump their heads a fucking lot.

ill be honest and admit that when I was a kid I was definitely within the puriteen camp bc gw!! I was a queer kid who just started grasping their sexuality in the middle of the pandemic and all I had was unrestricted access to the internet, that gave everything to me at 110%

I am not asking that every space be wiped squeaky clean just in case that a minor might be present, but I am asking to extend a little grace. Drop educational sources a so called puriteen should refer to!! Show how that kind of puritanical thinking can do actual harm to marginalized people!! Don’t get in internet spays w kids!! Just block and move on!!

(also i will forever be giggling at that one comic abt a minor entering an “adult” space and then getting mad at the adults there and calling them pedos just for the ‘adult’ space the op was talking about to be sophia the 1st nsfw fanfic. i literally cant)