#positive points

[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.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

historical drama/sitcom where two gay best friends (woman and man) get lavender married--and proceed to spend the Fancy European Honeymoon their parents paid for acting as each other's wingman

[lowreyglobalconsultants]

Chat GPT for language positive points

I posted a few times about why I felt it was dangerous to rely too much on ChatGPT for your English needs in business (here and here). I also allowed ChatGPT itself to counterpoint, teaching us some of its positive points. But I would not be a fair and impartial person if I didn't acknowledge some positive points.

It can work as a proofreader. You could copy your writing into the interface and ask it to proofread. If you ask it to preserve your own words as much as possible it could be a win-win.

It could take care of some routine communication that is not vital or involving company secrets.

If you feel your business partner is sending you ChatGPT e-mails, why not return the favor?

It can keep you company if you work alone or at home. Have a fun chat with it.

I still feel it is important to stick to your own word when you are building a business connection or you need to deal with sensitive information. But I exist in the real world and understand that people will use it sometimes, much as they use Google Translate when they are short on time to write an e-mail. But always proofread it and make sure that ChatGPT is saying what you would like to be communicated on your behest.

[fairsweetlonging]

truth serum / system reveal au where shen qingqiu gets hit with an uncloaking spell that reveals the system in the reflection of his eyes every time it pops up.

during one of his missions, in the treasure hoard of some dragon-like creature, he finds a golden, oval shaped hand mirror, its gaudy style more victorian based than anything (airplane you hack!), that doesn't seem to do anything when he looks into it. but when he does, it reveals the system's screen in his eyes.

he doesn't notice this, of course, because he can't see it, and the system, surprisingly, stays quiet.

the peak lords think he's cursed.

maybe mu qingfang is the first to notice, during the mandatory post mission check-up, when shen qingqiu is scrolling through his most recently accumulated points and mu qingfang can see the strange vividly-blue lines reflected in his pupils. it's gone when shen qingqiu blinks, like it was nothing but a trick of the light.

it comes out when yue qingyuan is visiting and, just as he's done laying out the plans for a new mission, shen qingqiu's eyes glaze over and a bright blue box takes over the whole of his iris. shen qingqiu goes quiet; the thing in his eyes moves, shifts, pulses for a second, like static worms crawling all over his pupils. then he blinks, and it's gone, and shen qingqiu accepts the mission that yue qingyuan was almost sure he would decline.

maybe there is an intervention, when the peak lords corner shen qingqiu at qian cao peak and try to figure out what's wrong, subjecting him to all kinds of treatments and curse-finding spells that turn up empty, they can't find anything.

of course, the silencing threat is still very much up and running. at first shen qingqiu was kind of confused by the whole ordeal, but when the peak lords start describing a "strange blue box", he realizes, with sickening suddenty, that they're describing the system. and he can't say anything.

this only makes everything worse, because their fellow peak lord now keeps evading every question and acts like he doesn't understand. liu qingge points right at his face and asks, "that blue box, what is it?" and shen qingqiu laughs nervously and starts talking about how bright the weather is and surely it's the sky and nothing to worry about!

even worse, during the intervention the system thought it was a good idea to start talking to him, so now even the peak lords who hadn't seen it and who might have been persuaded by light tricks and reflections, get a first row view that no, that definitely isn't a trick of the light.

they try to do the whole thing of "are you in danger, blink twice" but shen qingqiu can't even do that because it's still a direct admittance!

maybe eventually he starts saying vague confirmations that don't actually confirm anything, like "this master hears what you're saying", or maybe he goes with a classic "this master can neither confirm nor deny that." but the system starts warning him for that too and eventually he stops saying anything, which worries the others more.

luckily mu qingfang catches on that every time they ask a direct question about the box or shen qingqiu says anything vaguely confirming, it appears. it doesn't appear when they ask about curses or demons, so it must not see that as a threat.

for a little extra angst: maybe the peak lords keep pressuring him for answers, and at some point shen qingqiu gets fed up and snaps out something like, "why don't you understand that i'm not allowed to answer that!" the system counts this as a direct admittance, threatening it's existence. so it punishes. shen qingqiu has a qi deviation so bad it lasts two weeks and takes two people every day to cleanse his meridians. the system doesn't appear in that time. it doesn't appear for a long while after that, either. the peak lords stop asking, mainly because shen qingqiu will instantly leave the room if they do. they don't stop searching for a cure, though.

shang qinghua returns from a business trip and catches on the second someone mentions a blue box and forced silencing.

[communistkenobi]

I’m reading a paper that uses the term re-transition as opposed to detransition and it crystallised a lot of my problems with the term. detransition implies an ability to return to the “default” “normal” cisgender body that lurks within all of us, just waiting to be re-excavated after a period of intentional (deceitful) burial, and a turning “back” or away from the freakish mutilation and “deviance” of transgender transition to a more natural, more authentic body - a body that can never be transformed, only temporarily cloaked by medicine and social trickery on the part of trans people

[chittychittyyangyang]

Listen, you should never film strangers in public without their consent, but I swear there need to be fines or something for people who do that shit in some spaces. For example: I had to go to the ER last night, and some jerk filmed a woman who just came in and was clearly having an asthma attack. She immediately got to go back, and he was unhappy about that. Believe me, I get that it sucks having to wait when you're in pain, but you don't get to pick who deserves care when. The medical system in the US is a nightmare, and the ER could be the worst moment of someone's life. No one deserves to be recorded because some jack ass believes someone doesn't look like they need care.

This is fine to reblog. People who film strangers should be shamed if nothing else.

[lilislegacy]

percy, walking in the door: what smells so good?

annabeth, beaming: i made you every type of blue dessert that i could think of!

percy: oh yeah? what’s the occasion? oh crap, did i forget an anniversary?

annabeth: can’t a wife just bake for her husband?

percy, staring at her:

annabeth, staring at him:

percy, firmly: wise girl, we are not having another baby.

annabeth, frustrated: oh come on percy! why not?

percy: we’ve talked about this. we agreed to be done years ago. we have three, and they’ve destroyed half of our belongings! i mean, sure it would be fun, and i love babies and having kids with you, but we can’t just—

annabeth: if you agree to another baby, i’ll agree to another dog.

percy:

annabeth:

percy: are you bribing me into having a child?

annabeth: of course not! …why? is it working?

percy: of course not! but… keep talking.

annabeth: we can get a brand new little puppy. and you can choose both the breed and the name. maybe you can finally get that shepherd mix you’ve always wanted.

percy, rubbing his beard and thinking:

percy: you know, i’ve heard the transition from 3 to 4 kids is super easy. the little one would probably just fit right in.

annabeth: exactly. and since we’re so busy, my pregnancy will fly by. and the labor will be super fast since it’s my 4th. it’ll all happen in the blink of an eye. we’ll hardly even notice.

percy: true. then the baby and the puppy can just entertain each other.

annabeth: they’ll practically cancel each other out. and this way we’ll have an even number of kids.

percy, pointing at her: good for roller roasters.

annabeth, pointing at him: and family game nights.

[uncanny-tranny]

Learning to internalize the message above, but art is in all of our bones. If you feel afraid to create art because it won't be "good enough," it's worth it to explore why you feel that fear. Creating art is one of the basic impulses of people, and if you want to create art, then you absolutely must.

[lycandrophile]

if you’re young and transmasc and the people in your life haven’t been great about the whole thing and you’re starting to feel like it might be easier to just give up and pretend to be the person they want you to be, i need you to hold on. because the thing is, one second you’re 16 and a future where you get to make decisions about your own body and life feels so impossibly far away and you can’t imagine living like this for that long, but then you blink and it’s been six years and you’re in your car with the music blasting and your voice is lower than the guy in the song’s and your hair is long for the first time in a decade because you’re finally confident enough to grow it out again on your own terms and your chest hasn’t been weighed down in months and it’s the freest you’ve ever felt in your life and i promise it will be worth the wait. don’t give up on yourself.

[gaypeople]

he clearly likes to be coddled and hyped up by one man in particular

[romijuli]

It’s not that I don’t LIKE the Fandom Popular Pairings, it’s that I find the assumption that everyone ships them and the general all-consuming nature of said pairings to be kinda exhausting,

[pulsingvoid]

first and last DELAINEY HAYLES credits in IWTV season 2

[the-mad-prince-of-denmark]

Can’t decide what’s funnier- Benoit Blanc meeting his husband during a high stakes murder mystery or Benoit Blanc meeting his husband at like, the grocery store

[shmaroace]

don't get me wrong, i love all the positivity around being aro, like "be proud of being aro!! love who you are!!", but we never talk about how hard it is to reach that spot. so here's to the aros who are still trying to understand themselves, who aren't proud of who they are yet, who are still coming to terms with their new identity.

[stealerofthe2ndbraincell]

There's an aspect of Original!Elias Bouchard that makes me so sad to think about in a weird kind of "meta" way.

And that's the fact that he has to be labelled as the "OG" not as Elias.

Technically speaking Elias has been dead for years. It's Jonah that's taken over - literally having his eyes removed and replacing them with his own and living as him (he even seemingly keeps his "old fashioned haircut" on Elias' hair).

And yet we as the audience don't often call that form of Jonah "JONAH". Instead it's Elias, cause he's been Elias for 4 series at this point.

"Elias started the apocalypse", "Elias beat that old man to death with a metal pipe" when it was never really Elias in the first place.

He's been so robbed of his own identity that not even death can spare him; all of Jonah's actions in his body are recognised as him.

(Btw this isn't me saying you can't call Jonah!Elias straight up Elias, I do that regularly ofc. I'm just being emo rn lol)

[slfcare]

the most difficult thing about growing as a person socially, as in getting out of your shell and noticing that you are, is that there will still be times when it doesn’t feel like you’ve grown at all! times when you can’t really connect with anyone around you, times when you fail to enter into an existing conversation, times when you say the wrong thing (or nothing at all when in hindsight you probably should’ve). but that’s also kind of the best thing, because that’s the thing that helps you realize that sometimes, it’s not you or your lack of skills or any shortcoming. sometimes certain environments just aren’t for you and certain people aren’t your people, and that’s okay. that’s human. it’s okay to not feel the progress you have made all the time.