#that's for me to know

[melodydescribed]

left, right up down, left left right left left left left, up right

[schnuckiputz]

saw a few posts about feral!steve and i had thoughts.

steve teaches himself a lot of things. he teaches himself how to care for his car. teaches himself how to cook, how to be alone for weeks/months at a time without going insane. and most of all, he teaches himself how to care about other people.

he went to the richard harrington school of "people are only worth what they can give you in regards to money, status and power (even if you're talking about your own wife and child)". so, empathy? sympathy? not exactly on the curriculum. the first question is never "how can i help? what can i give?" but "how can i use this? what can i take?". if the answer to those questions is "nothing" than that person is nothing to him, too. no reason to spare them another moment or thought.

and for the first 16 or so years of his life, this works pretty well for him. tommy and carol both basically went to the same school - just with different headmasters. so, when they meet at school they take one look at each other and just know. like attracts like.

but then he meets nancy wheeler and in those fateful days of autumn in 1983 he gets a crashcurse in "caring about more than yourself." they're pretty formative days.

after, he tries to live by nancy's example but it's not as easy as she makes it look. he starts people watching - trying to parse out what that whole empathy/sympathy thing is supposed to look like. he's always been pretty good at noticing things, at analysing wants and needs. but comprehending what other people are feeling? and reacting accordingly? that's another beast entirely. so it's no wonder really that his relationship with nancy explodes spectacullarly.

it takes him months and years to teach himself how to listen to his fathers voice inside his head and then do the exact opposite. but still, his capacity to care is mostly restricted to the people he considers his (and to some extent the people his people love).

so he doesn't use the nailbat on max's brother and takes the beating intended for lucas. accepts that nancy is better off with jonathan and quiets the voice inside him, that wants retribution. takes the kids teasings without lashing out and learns how to appologise when his patience fails. learns how to be kind.

but he has no such kindness for those outside his circle. for russian guards and monsters and evil in human form.

in 1986, he (officially) meets eddie munson. someone that couldn't be more different from him than the sun to the moon. because eddie cares - he cares so much. maybe even too much. so he taught himself to be mean. to be loud and scary and unapproachable as a defense mechanism.

and steve looks at this boy that carries his heart on a leather clad sleeve and thinks "oh." because opposites attract. and maybe, sometimes, what a warm hearted boy that learned how to be cold needs is a cold hearted boy who learned how to be warm.

so, when some jock assholes thinks they can put his hands on eddie, steve lets coldness seep into his eyes, takes the nailbat from his trunk and shows them why they called him king once.

[paintedcrows]

Did anyone tell Ford (bonus doodles: Family Movie Night, 70s Classics)

[thisisalovestry]

file -> phrases that are going to shift something in me forever

[bixels]

As gen-AI becomes more normalized (Chappell Roan encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use gen-AI because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by tech companies. I draw not because I want a drawing but because I love the process of drawing. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

[puppppppppy]

filipina miku!! my mom helped me with her outfit ^_^

[starbuck]

“…to me” is one of the most powerful disclaimers we have on here… is this character analysis accurate? debatable. but it’s real… to me.

[bird-prince-art]

friend made my birthday cake

[cosmiiqueer]

can we like, have adaptations made by people who care about the thing they're adapting

[the-moon-loves-the-sea]

Shared here today by Matthew Boroson on Facebook. (ETA: Gaining inspiration from other authors is great. Lifting passages and avoiding giving credit isn’t.)

Tanith Lee was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel, for the second book of the Flat Earth series. She died in 2015. You can buy Tales From the Flat Earth here and here .

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[tawnysoup]

Found my fav Slay the Princess route recently. Dragon my beloved. Your horrifying beak mouth was an impossible-to-refuse lip syncing challenge 💖

Shoutouts to @blacktabbygames for making such a cool game!

[paintedcrows]

They do this every year...

Happy 25th to Dipdop and Lebam!! and Happy 17th to Hatsune Miku!! 🎉🎉

(comic continued: The M&M stands for...)

[lapdogchase]

interaction i have with shocking regularity is when someone’s complaining abt someone they know and theyre like “ughh they’re 21 and dont have a job and refuse to learn to drive” and then they remember who they’re talking to (me. 21 cant work cant drive) and go like