#on representations

[nibelmundo]

You gave me a language to dwell in, a gift so perfect it seems my own invention. I have been thinking your spoken and written thoughts for so long I believed they were mine. I have been seeing the world through your eyes for so long, I believed that clear, clear view was my own.

Toni Morrison in her eulogy of James Baldwin in Lovalerie King and L. Scott, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison: Comparative Critical and Theoretical Essays (2006, 2)

[saszor]

Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

Consider supporting me on ko-fi if you find this to be helpful.

edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!

second way more important edit: How are people seeing this post where I specifically talk about burn survivors being normal, real people, and still tag this as "TW body horror"? Not a single one of these drawings or pictures is a fresh injury. All of them are healed. How the hell would you feel if someone tagged a photo of you as "trigger warning: gore"?

Disabled people are not your fucking body horror. Grow up.

[hamletthedane]

Thinking about him (the soldier in Poynter’s Faithful Until Death painting watching an apocalypse unfold around him with horror in his eyes as he tries to keep himself standing beneath a doorway, based on an actual 19th century archeological find of a man in full soldier’s garb under a doorway at Pompeii)

[stil-lindigo]

lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)

if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.

--

no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.

I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.

I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.

If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.

[annabelle--cane]

her pronouns are HE/HIM

[wolfythewitch]

👁️

[bizarreaizen]

real homies respect trans people! /gen

[dionysus-complex]

look I know it’s supposed to be a joke but that “irradiated wasteland” is the unceded homeland of the Paiute and Shoshone peoples and consists of fragile Mojave and Great Basin desert ecosystems that are actively being exploited and destroyed by mining interests who utilize the perception of desert as wasteland to justify their destruction of indigenous lands and communities. the joke's not funny. fuck off with this.

[cowsabungus]

Make pride accessible for everyone!!!!

I made a post about this last year and the year before, and thought if I did it this way it gives people and orgs something to work towards. Often people forget that disabled people aren't just wheelchair users, and even those who are, need more than just that ramp!

My first ever pride, not only as a wheelchair but my first ever EVER pride, I went in expecting to feel at home.

Obviously I wasn't, I'm disabled, so why should I?

Instead there was just a ridiculous amount of uneven flooring, a steep ramp to the disabled toilet, no sanitary towel bin in the disabled toilet (???) no allowances to be let out of the festival to fetch things from my car, no where quiet and organisers who seemed genuinely surprised to see a wheelchair user!

My next pride, three years later, I was a seller, and while they had sorted their toilet problem (still no sanitary towel bin???), the hill to get in wouod have been genuinely impossible for me to get to if I hadn't been driving to get my stall in anyway, even with someone pushing me, no quiet areas, plenty of kerbs for me to get stuck at and again, genuine surprise.

Why is it so surprising to consider disabled people might be at pride? Not only do queer disabled people exist, but parents and family of queer kids and people, vendors and even entertainers!

Making pride accessible is crucial!

ID available in Alt Text

[iant0jones]

"I feel very proud to be a black Creole vampire, in the show. I mean, I hope that all it does is opens the gates for more. Let's tell more stories. Let's be monsters! And enjoy it! Yeah, let's be problematic. Give us the space to be a problem." - Jacob Anderson

[victusinveritas]

Members of the Navajo nation drape the Palestinian flag across their land, 2019

[nibelmundo]

Toni (Morrison)’s my ally and it’s really probably too complex to get into. She’s a black woman writer, which in the public domain makes it more difficult to talk about . . . Her gift is allegory. Tar Baby is an allegory. In fact all her novels are. But they’re hard to talk about in public. That’s where you get in trouble because her books and allegory are not always what they seem to be about. I was too occupied with my recent illness to deal with Beloved. But in general, she’s taken a myth, or she takes what seems to be a myth, and turns it into something else. I don’t know how to put this, Beloved could be the story of truth. She’s taken a whole lot of things and turned them upside down. Some of them you recognize the truth in it. I think that Toni’s very painful to read . . . Because it’s always, or most times, a horrifying allegory; but you recognize that it works. But you don’t really want to march through it. Sometimes people have a lot against Toni, but she’s got the most believing story of everybody, this rather elegant matron, whose intentions really are serious, and according to some people, lethal.

1987 interview of James Baldwin in Lovalerie King and L. Scott, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison: Comparative Critical and Theoretical Essays (2006, 1)

[saszor]

Tutorial for drawing characters with cleft lip! Sorry that it's mostly unilateral-centric but it makes up the vast majority of resources and photos. Still tried to get tips for drawing bilateral clefts in though.

Keep in mind that this is an introductory drawing tutorial and has some generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People 👍

If you draw any characters using this feel free to tag me!

Consider supporting me on ko-fi if you find this to be helpful.

[nanaluvbug]

Dungeon Melanin 🤎 Afrolatino Designs

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[gifsbysimplysonia]

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