#one more negative than the other

[rockingthegraveyard]

i need more catherine todd content in my life

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Out of sight, out of - wait.

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[buckyscap]

this part always gets me giggling kicking my feet twirling my hair. when wade kept asking about logan's suit saying he just wanted to bond, logan said "well then talk about something else"

he's practically showing us he's not against talking to wade at all, unlike how he wants us to believe by being so grumpy and telling him to stfu all the time.... that scene really got me going "aw he wants to bond? 🥺" in the theatre

[diceverses]

First entry for Stanuary and also a fanart for @detectivejigsawpines ‘s incredible fic Nothing More than Feelings with Hope, Fantasy, and Stubbornness celebrating being less depressed in the mindscape! Fantasy was not described but I imagined him as baby Stan in a pirate bandana. Hope I did your characters justice!

[sergle]

man, you know, nobody asked me, but I have such conflicting opinions on some of the fat falin art, where on one hand: it's always nice to see A Fat Body in fanart anywhere + it's being done in positive ways, for funsies and on the other hand, there is something so familiar about how you are automatically The Fat One if you are a woman simply standing next to a more petite woman, bc I've had a 0% hitrate in seeing people change Marcille's body type and keep Falin's, or change both of them. it's just Falin

[kideaternomnom]

My two favorite pairings in a nutshell, or at least very similar to it.

[aphidclan-clangen]

Hi! Happy 2025 :D

You've done an amazing job this past year, Iridis! AphidClan is one of the only clangens I can follow without getting lost or bored within a few updates (including one of my own I tried to start lol); your designs are instantly recognizable and eye-catching, the darker lore is balanced out with enough cute, light moments that it never feels overwhelming or overcomplicated, you express such a wide range of emotions and dynamics so well! Plus the diversity in your character base and your care towards representing a variety of identities, just makes me so happy to see. Everything about this comic is so uniquely creative, it's honestly incredibly impressive.

Obviously nothing against other clangens– just that yours has something special I've been unable to find elsewhere :]

Thank you for everything you've done this year, and I hope the next goes well for you 💞

AWWWW man thank you so much <33 This is so sweet and honestly relieving to hear lol, I often feel like I don’t really know what I’m doing with Aphidclan. Like it’s a constant hazy state of cluelessness that I’ve just grown used to. Im not very aware of like… what my work reads as to others? Man I dunno if you guys even know what’s going on lmao. So it’s really nice to hear an outside perspective and realize that’s probably just a me thing. And that it’s impressive??? Damn, man, thank you lol

I’ve never quite done anything like Aphidclan before. It started at a time in my life when I was…technically my gender exploration journey started months earlier than this, but it was kinda started at the cusp of my own gender identity exploration,,explosion. The first thing I wanted to explore was being xenogender (other folk go from “cisgender —> maybe I’m non-binary or trans…” in their journey like normal people but nah man. before anything else occurred to me I went from “im cisgender” to “maybe I’m a neon rainbow insect with neopronouns actually :)” lmao) and that coincided really well with the rise of the clangen trend, so I figured I’d use some brand new OCs to explore gender identity in a…safe way? In a safe little pocket where it was all,,,nonconsequential and only tangential to my own identity. And I ended up exploring transgender and non-binary identities as well very frequently, which was mostly helped by the game giving me cats with assigned genders/sexes and me squinting at them and going “…nah. that’s a unicorncore trans man if I ever seen one” and reversing it, and then transing half the cast lmao.

I was not transgender going into this comic. I am now coming out of our first year with Aphidclan as a transmasc nonbinary man <3

I never intended it to be a thing for representation points exactly? I was certainly surprised by the lack of xenogender and more complicated/unusual LGBTQ gender identities depicted in all media ever! I still don’t really understand why something like neopronouns aren’t more present? They’re the coolest shit ever. Like- we’ve broken down gender norms and gender roles so much that now gender is not just “feminine” and “masculine,” it’s anything and everything you could ever want it to be. It’s ultimate freedom. It’s not just what it means to be “man” or “woman,” it’s “but what if I was more than that? What if I felt like a bug? Or a rainbow? Or a cloud? Or a connection to nature and the ocean and the stars? What if I felt like I was part of the universe? Or a music genre, or a concept, or a candy bar, an animal, a fairy, a slice of fruit!” You could be anything you’ve ever dreamed of being and more.

And once you get used to the funky grammar of neopronouns, it’s not that polarizingly different from other identities at all, honestly. And plus, it’s really fkin fun lol.

Aphidclan’s helped me explore a lot throughout this year. There were often times where I was struggling with my own femininity as a trans man and I remembered Firebeetle and the support I’ve received for his character, and using “well, if it’s okay for firebeetle to wear dresses and flowers and feminine things, then it’s okay for me to do that too, and it doesn’t invalidate my identity at all” and it really helped. 2024 was a great year for me creatively and exploration-wise, and I’ll certainly never be the same. Thank you guys for all your support, it means a lot <3

[yaralulu]

I’m asking the important questions here.

[sasukeless]

sasuke being painted as The possessive one of the relationship when that’s not shown in canon and people mostly use panels out of context (i saw “my one and only” or “i know your heart and you mine” being used to prove him being possessive which is ???) but somehow naruto that actually has moments he shows to be possessive are not counted. but like even without them, if you analyzed their relationship you would realize it does make the most sense for naruto to be like that unlike sasuke. because naruto has abandonment issues already with sasuke, sasuke did left him and cut him off once and left naruto really traumatized (even if it’s not sasuke’s fault, it’s still one of the biggest sources of naruto’s pain) so him being scared sasuke could leave him again and the urge to keep him makes complete sense. on the other hand, sasuke has never felt that loss, naruto has constantly chased and picked him over everyone including his own goals over and over. and his fears about love turning into grief if he lost naruto are quite literally shattered by naruto himself in vote2.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Compound Fracture

YA thriller set in rural West Virginia

follows an autistic trans boy who survives being almost killed by the Sheriff’s son after a party, and accidentally kills one of the boys who hurt him when he tries to get back at him

and is pulled head-first back into the 100 year old feud between his & the sheriff’s families, that began when his great-great grandfather was executed after inciting a miner’s rebellion, the grandfather whose ghost has started to haunt him

community & family & socialist revolution

aro-questioning MC

arc from netgalley, out september 3

[anbaisai]

A bit odd for me to say this right after I posted new art, but I’ve been having somewhat of a difficult time with art lately 💦 It’s not quite art block, but everything I draw just feels a bit… lacking.

The style I use in most posts are a simplified version of my more “standard” and realistic style, which tends to take more energy and time hence I don’t use it for everything. But sometimes it just feels like I’m not challenging myself enough or like I’m slacking off, when I know I can do better. I wish I did more practice & studies in the past so I could get faster at drawing in the more complex style, because it’s quite hard to squeeze out time to do so these days 😔 I really appreciate people enjoying my work, but sometimes nothing can overpower the curse of being strict and having high standards for yourself.

[serpentface]

Do you conlang? I was wondering if you had naming languages (or possibly even more developed ones) for pulling the words you use. I tried to search your blog but didn't find anything, wouldn't be surprised if the feature is just busted tho. Your worldbuilding is wonderful and I particularly enjoy the anthropological and linguistic elements.

Ok the thing is I had kind of decided I was not going to do any conlanging because I don't feel like I'm equipped to do a good job of it, like was fully like "I'm just going to do JUST enough that it doesn't fail an immediate sniff test and is more thoughtful than just keysmashing and putting in vowels". And then have kinda been conlanging anyway (though not to a very deep and serious extent. I maybe have like....an above average comprehension of how language construction works via willingness to research, but that's not saying much, also I can never remember the meanings of most linguistic terms like 'frictives' or etc off the top of my head. I'm just kinda raw dogging it with a vague conceptualization of what these things mean)

I do at least have a naming language for Wardi (and more basic rules for other established languages) but the rudimentary forms of it were devised with methods much shakier and less linguistically viable than even the most basic naming language schemes, and I only went back over it LONG after I had already made a bunch of words so there's some inconsistencies with consonant presence and usage. (This can at least be justified because it IS a language that would have a lot of loanwords and would be heavily influenced by other language groups- Burri being by far the most significant, Highland-Finnic and Yuroma-Lowlands also being large contributors)

The 'method' I used was:

-Skip basic construction elements and fully move into devising necessary name words, with at least a Vibe of what consonants are going to be common and how pronunciation works -Identify some roots out of the established words and their meanings. Establish an ongoing glossary of known roots/words. -Construct new words based in root words, or as obvious extensions/variants of established words. -Get really involved in how the literal meanings of some words might not translate properly to english, mostly use this to produce a glossary of in-universe slang. -Realize that I probably should have at least some very basic internal consistency at this point. -Google search tutorials on writing a naming language. -Reverse engineer a naming language out of established words, and ascribe all remaining inconsistencies to being loanwords or just the mysteries of life or whatever.

I do at least have some strongly established pronunciation rules and a sense of broad regional dialect/accents.

-'ai' words are almost always pronounced with a long 'aye' sound.

-There is no 'Z' or 'X' sound, a Wardi speaker pronouncing 'zebra' would go for 'tsee-brah', and would attempt 'xylophone' as 'ssye-lohp-hon'

-'V' sounds are nearly absent and occur only in loanwords, and tend to be pronounced with a 'W' sound. 'Virsum' is a Highland word (pronounced 'veer-soom') denoting ancestry, a Wardi speaker would go 'weer-sum'.

-'Ch' spellings almost always imply a soft 'chuh' sound when appearing after an E, I, or O (pelatoche= pel-ah-toh-chey), but a hard 'kh' sound after an A or U (odomache= oh-doh-mah-khe). When at the start of a word, it's usually a soft 'ch' unless followed by an 'i' sound (chin (dog) is pronounced with a hard K 'khiin', cholem (salt) is pronounced with a soft Ch 'cho-lehm')

-Western Wardin has strong Burri cultural and linguistic influence, and a distinct accent- one of the most pronounced differences is use of the ñ sound in 'nn' words. The western city of Ephennos is pronounced 'ey-fey-nyos' by most residents, the southeastern city of Erubinnos is pronounced 'eh-roo-been-nos' by most residents. Palo's surname 'Apolynnon' is pronounced 'A-puh-lee-nyon' in the Burri and western Wardi dialects (which is the 'proper' pronunciation, given that it's a Kos name), but will generally be spoken as 'Ah-poh-leen-non' in the south and east.

-R's are rolled in Highland-Finnic words. Rolling R's is common in far northern rural Wardi dialects but no others. Most urban Wardi speakers consider rolling R's sort of a hick thing, and often think it sounds stupid or at least uneducated. (Brakul's name should be pronounced with a brief rolled 'r', short 'ah' and long 'uul', but is generally being pronounced by his south-southeastern compatriots with a long unrolled 'Brah' sound).

Anyway not really a sturdy construction that will hold up to the scrutiny of someone well equipped for linguistics but not pure bullshit either.

[kirkwallguy]

im going to wait how i feel after seeing taash's storyline but i think the reason im finding the trans stuff mildly uncomfortable is because it's so positive. that sounds bad. but as much as i get some people feel they need positive stories right now to counteract the current climate i find it MORE alienating when a significant part of the trans experience is stripped away. we have top surgery scars but no indication of who top surgery is accessible to, how tf is an elf in minrathous getting gender affirming care? mae tells us this heartwarming story about how great her coming out was and if you respond "well my coming out didn't go great!" there's still no room for negativity, it's straight onto "well if you need to talk about it i will always be here for you :)" girl i dont know you? why can't we just sit with the fact that it would suck to be trans in thedas and do something interesting with it

[bloogers-boogers]

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[lurkiestvoid]

I have absolutely zero spoons to provide links this is not a news post this is a ... a sigh. it's widely reported and easily searchable info. Fuck it i came back and added links

memos relating to the bullshit huge federal funding freeze and demanding orgs answer 14 questions by next week to keep their funding, to ensure they aren't supporting "illegal" "DEIA"

The acronym has grown

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

They're gonna go after the whole fuckin ADA, aren't they.

Oh, and he repealed instructed the DOJ not to enforce the FACE Act, the 90s law to protect clinics, patients, and staff from anti-choice protestors (they can now get right back up to the doors, and short of basically killing someone it just won't be enforced)

They're trying to institute a way to simultaneously email all 2.3 million federal employees at once to be able to "communicate directly" and not have orders "filtered by management". Several lawsuits already, massive privacy concerns, etc.

Loyalty tests have begun for both current employees and applicants, mostly headed by department-inexperienced youths, to ensure full 100% enthusiastic support specifically of MAGA over Republican party and with zero non-party associations or opinions

He revoked equal opportunity employment, killing 60 years of labor+civil rights just as both my trans wife and my trans self are trying to find work

The funding freeze has everyone scrambling. Compliance by 5pm today, so many have been working through the night because some of these programs can't just be flipped like a switch. non-profits panicking. Research suspended. Emergency meetings. Already "temporary" layoffs of medical staff and others, for grant freezes.

r/fednews is a new subreddit for Fed workers to whistleblow and share internal fuckery. Have a random screenshot.

The reddit account that discovered that the funding freeze EO was written by two randos bc the pdf metadata wasn't scrubbed, one of whom is Heritage Foundation, was nuked. An hour later the EO was updated to change the "author"

Aaaaand he's openly talking about deporting "criminals," and regressives are enthusiastically supportive of the idea of deporting "dissidents" like [checks notes] American citizen Selena Gomez.

Etc etc etc oh god there's so fucking much already.

I am left wondering how to personally tread the line between "do not comply in advance" and "do not draw attention to yourself." How to keep my family safe. I am wondering how many of the social media posts encouraging people to scream and be loud and DEMAND to be SEEN and RESPECTED as QUEER/DISABLED/ETC are maybe written by people who don't know or remember how fucking bad the baseline social attitude was towards marginalized people even just twenty years ago, and therefore have zero context for exactly how bad it can get and what it's like to survive daily life in even the mildest of strict national oppression, and maybe don't really even believe us when we try to tell them, think we could never go back that far surely, not for very long surely.

And I am so, so sorry my loves, but you have yet to see a true winter, and you're treating the snow flurries as hyperbole.