#<- kind of feel bad re-tagging for old art but it's also for ease of searching my blog so oh well ^^'

[gemsbian]

Doing some stuff for artfight so Frankster gets an updated ref, this time featuring Tripod!

As I've mentioned before, Michael and Feebie are service pokemon that help Frankie with day to day tasks and emotional support. Tripod is a disservice pokemon on account of always stealing her prosthetic

[rubykgrant]

RVB High School AU, where everything is just slightly more normal-

Church; english and history teacher. always looks like he’s tired. got fired from his job at a different school for getting into a fist-fight with a dad after Church suspended his kid. had an accident in his teens, woke up with memory loss (this happens again, like 5 times). hates most of his family except for 2 cousins who are OK. finds out some of his students have bad home situations, and signs up as a foster dad so they don’t have to move away. tells his students not to swear, then drops F-bombs

Tucker; student who got held back (so he’s still technically a freshman). keeps wearing shirts with inappropriate phrases to school, and is forced to put on something from lost-and-found. his foster family sucks, so he winds up living with Church. he gets Church into playing video games and stuff like laser-tag/paintball (this becomes a huge thing later with everybody). writes “bow-chicka-bow-wow” on all his books

Caboose; new kid and freshman who is big for his age. he came from a crowded family, and when the system heard Church was signed up as a foster parent, they sent Caboose his way. he’s a little accident-prone and has a tendency to bring home stray/feral animals. Church has been trying very hard to NOT YELL at him, but it is a challenge. once Caboose decides to be friends with you, that is it- you have no choice

Sheila; social worker who helps Church with some of the legal nonsense involved with being a foster parent. she winds up working with him a lot, because his boys keep getting into trouble (she knows they’re actually good for each other, despite being dysfunctional)

Tex; substitute teacher. Church calls her in for help at one point, due to the school not having enough staff. they used to date, and maybe kinda-sorta still do. Church honestly digs how scary she is, and he doesn’t say anything to deny it when the staff make whipped jokes. Tex has also had some kind of military training, and passionately tells the kids “Do NOT join the military”. she’s very tall and intimidating, but has a softer side and the kids like her. rides a motorcycle to work

Sarge; PE teacher who got nick-named because of how he acts during class, telling kids to drop and give him 20. started being the shop teacher as well because of the lack of staff at the school. he mostly acts gruff and grumpy, but when he found out some of his students needed better homes, he asked Church how to go about becoming a foster parent. also gets into the laser-tag/paintball thing, and takes it VERY seriously

Simmons; previously a “gifted student” who skipped 2 grades and attended a strict boarding school, but it became clear he was being pushed too hard and couldn’t handle it. he’s been placed back as a sophomore in public school and now has an easier class schedule. has an unstoppable need to be a teacher’s pet. he’s socially awkward but also can’t shut up when he’s nervous, so he gets a lot of unwanted attention. winds up living with Sarge

Grif; sophomore who got expelled from his old school. skips class a lot to go sleep in the back corner of the library (Simmons found his spot, but so far hasn’t told on him). Sarge used to yell at Grif a lot during PE, until he found out that Grif used to be literally bullied and harassed by a previous teacher, and so he eased up. Grif is the king of lunchroom trades, and gets as many snacks as possible. eventually moves in with Sarge, and Simmons bothers him constantly about not cleaning his room

Donut; new freshman, immediately placed with Sarge as a foster kid. his hometown was hit with a disaster, so several of kids got shuffled around. despite dealing with a lot of difficult situations, he has a very positive attitude. gets really into creative writing. the theater kids and the cheerleaders all like him a lot. people can’t tell if Donut is making jokes or if he just... accidentally talks like that? has a weekly argument with the art teacher about “lightish-red”

Lopez; Driver’s Ed instructor, as well as the Spanish teacher. if you’ve never taken his Spanish class, he’ll occasionally speak to you in english, but if you are one of his language students, he wants to make SURE you learn, and will only say anything in Spanish around you. one of the few teachers who can stand to be around Sarge outside of work, and they fix vehicles together

Doc; sophomore who plans on becoming a doctor one day, but he keeps failing the practice tests to attend an early program. is the student assistant for the infirmary at school, so kids wind up calling him Doc. brings his own home-made healthy lunches to school, and always has enough to share. he’s also a junior secretary for the office, and the other kids know he has answer keys for tests, so they trick him into coming to their houses for a sleep-over, and then they raid his backpack

Kai; Grif’s little sister, freshman. they got split up a few years back when social workers realized they were living in a run-down house alone. she finally had a chance to go to the same school as her bro again, but got placed in a different foster house (Church just had more room at his place). used to be very shy and awkward, and is trying to re-invent herself at her new school by being more confident and flirty

Wash; junior transfer student. previously a military school kid, but the school was shut down. he’s gone through a few phases; feeling like the dork in the group, having an anger problem, and now finally starting to figure out who he really is. when Church has another accident and is stuck in the hospital, Wash forges a bunch of papers to make it seem like Church is still at the house so the kids can stay there. even though he’s the oldest, he has too much anxiety to learn how to drive a car

Carolina; another junior transfer student that went to the same military school as Wash. seems to hate Tex and Church on sight, but Tex doesn’t know why and Church forgot the reason. she’s been neglected by her family and has both anger and trust issues. without even realizing they have a connection, Church winds up bonding with her (since he’s had some practice dealing with a handful of troubled kids). reconnecting with Wash and spending time with the other students in this weird group helps her chill out

Flowers; Vice Principal of the school. the kids started a rumor that he’s secretly a serial killer... the staff is like 50% sure it might be true. generally very cheerful, but somehow still off-putting (secretly knows thing’s about Church’s family that Church doesn’t remember, and while his motives aren’t clear, he’s still manipulative)

[beholdme]

All the Many Shades of Gerry - Chapter 3

Chapters: 3/19

Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist

Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Gertrude Robinson, Elias Bouchard

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Library AU, Librarian Jon, Artist Gerry, Trans Male Character, Trans Martin Blackwood, Canon Asexual Character, Asexual Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Ace Subtype - Sex Positive, Polyamory, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romantic Fluff, Falling In Love, Boys in Skirts, Kissing, Demisexual Gerard Keay, Minor Character Death, Past Character Death, Canon-Typical Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Flirting, Minor Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Adventures in Hair Dying, Happy Ending, Banter, Gerry has a lot of sass, Gerard Keay is Morticia Adams, Jon is a very grumpy Librarian, Martin adores them anyway.

Summary: In which Gerry is a kaleidoscope and Jon and Martin can't help falling in love with him.

He happens to love them back.

Find it on Ao3

[1] [2]

In the following weeks, as he sees Jon a few more times, Gerry's hair fades out and he looks rather more 'forest nymph' than 'American Gothic'.

So it's not much of a shock when the next time Jon catches sight of Gerry striding through the library stacks, his hair has been re-coloured. This time it's a smooth buttery yellow and Jon is struck by how young the warm, bright colour makes him look.

Gerry doesn't feel young though, he feels tired and bored and wrung out, and he wishes he had never agreed to take art commissions.

"It's only the one time!" Gertrude had insisted to a very put upon Gerry, very early in the morning. "And if he puts in a good word for you in his circles, your name will really be on the map in the art world."

Gerry wasn't particularly interested in being put on any maps, or being picked apart by rich, stuck up strangers, but he had agreed to try, mostly because Gertrude had put a lot of effort into making his passion for art an actual career and he felt like he owed her.

(He forgets, frequently, just how much of a commission she takes on the sales of his paintings).

So there he was, striding around the library at 7 am and desperately looking for exactly the right reference book. Unfortunately, it has been out of print for years, and Gerry can't seem to find a copy anywhere that won't cost him half a liver. He has the money now, but he refuses to pay half a month's rent to a second-hand retailer on principle.

Jon watches him skulk around for so long, (apparently forgetting that he is, in fact, a librarian) that Sasha comes out from her desk to ask Gerry if he's looking for something specific. She's wearing her big round glasses today and even indulged herself in her favorite waistcoat to beat the Monday blues.

"Why, yes." At this, Gerry looks directly up at Jon, where he is standing and watching him from the upper balcony level. Jon's face burns, and he ducks out of sight, but not earshot. "I do actually come here to borrow books, not boys." And he smartly feeds her the name of the reference book he has been hunting for almost an hour.

Sasha giggles at his antics, "We do have a copy of that, actually, but it's very popular. There's a waitlist; also it's checked out right now."

Gerry's whole demeanor sags and he sighs in defeat. "Guess I really will just have to order it off the internet, then." He eyes the stacks of books, old and new, looking vaguely betrayed.

"No!" Sasha's exclamation takes everyone a bit aback, being that they are in a library and all. "You know, my mate has this sweet little bookstore, and he loves hunting down rare copies of older books, he might have a copy?" She wrings her hands, eyebrows raised in question.

Gerry beams down at her, causing even stoic Sasha to blush and scurry off to get a piece of paper for the address.

They're already most of the way to the front desk by the time Jon realizes just which bookstore Sasha is busy recommending to the man he is dating , and just who owns that particular establishment.

By the time he manages to get downstairs to try to deflect the situation, Gerry is out the door, nothing left but the faint scent of oil paints and leather from his jacket.

***

Tim Stoker leaves Gerry feeling faintly dazed. By the time he stumbles out of the bookstore and into the tea room, elusive book in hand, he's forgotten everything he has ever known in the face of such intense flirting. And Gerry thought he was bad.

Throughout the whole episode at the library, the walk through Chelsea, and the exchange with Tim, Gerry had never once taken a moment to consider that Sasha's friend with a bookstore and Jon's Martin with a bookstore might be the same person.

He chooses to blame the lack of sleep and general disarray that is his life for the oversight.

Which is how, 9:30 in the morning, having been awake for almost 24 hours and completely finished, Gerry walks up to Martin in his tea room and says, "I'll have whatever is pink and in that jug, please. The biggest you've got."

Martin, of course, recognized him immediately. He would have recognized Jon's gothic childhood boyfriend from his social media stalking alone, but Jon's frantic texting was also a pretty big giveaway.

Martin: Relax, I don't bite clients this early in the morning. He's in safe hands with me.

Jon: HE KNOWS THINGS ABOUT ME. Besides, who's gonna stop him from biting you?

Martin: Whatever he has to tell me can’t possibly be worse than the office gossip I heard about you before we even meet.

Jon: W H A T

Now, here Gerry is before him, and he’s quite pleased with what he sees. Even tired and vaguely dazed, his presence in the little room carries a certain energy that Martin enjoys.

"Right away. Take a seat and I'll call you with it." Martin's voice is sweet, but gentle and firm, in a comforting sort of way. Through Gerry's sleepy haze, the instruction makes perfect sense, although he has neither paid nor offered a call name.

Gerry considers taking a seat on the plush bench that occupies one wall, before deciding that he desperately needs a cigarette, and wandering outside.

Technically he is only supposed to smoke at night when he's painting and needs just the right kind of boost, but he decides to call this one since he's on a painting-based errand when he's supposed to be sleeping.

"Gerry?" He turns toward the sound of his name, to find the barista offering him a large to-go cup of what he assumes is fruit ice tea. He frowns at having his name known (his new, much-preferred name, no less) and then frowns at a blonde, bespectacled man in a tea room attached to a bookstore.

His brain finally takes a moment to function, and he puts all the pieces together in an avalanche.

"Martin?" Far from his usual self-confident tone, the single word comes out in a squeak that would make even a toddler wince.

"Yes?" Martin returns the single word in the same solidly reassuring way, and even offers a happy smile.

"I didn't... I didn't recognize you."

"Would be pretty hard for you, considering this is the first we've ever met." Martin's voice is calming in a way that eases Gerry a bit, teasing and all.

"Thank you. For the tea, I mean." Gerry closes his eyes and desperately begs his shit to pull together for him, just this one time. "It's nice to finally meet you."

His hands are fully occupied with a book, a cup of tea, and a cigarette, but Martin doesn't seem particularly bothered by the lack of a hand to shake. "It's nice to meet you too. We're giving Jon a heart attack by doing it without him."

"That is the lawful good," Gerry says, after a long drag of his smoke. "A panicked Jon is a happy Jon, after all. Whatever would he do with himself without a situation to unnecessarily complicate?"

"Yes, the man does seem to thrive on anxiety, doesn't he?" Martin asks warmly, eyes crinkling around a fond smile. "Speaking of, you seem pretty wrecked yourself. Good party, I hope."

Gerry's answering laugh has a razor edge, "Not hardly. This fucking painting I'm working on will be the death of me." Gerry lifts the reference book as proof of trauma and stabs out his cigarette viciously.

"Hmm, sounds like a pain. I hope you typically find art a more enjoyable career?" Martin asks, tilting his head inquisitively. His curly hair moves fetchingly and Gerry catches himself tracking the movement.

"Mostly, yes. Although I keep the bartending gig for variety. You'd be amazed at the sort of inspiration someone can find in the right drunk crowd." Gerry grins, thinking of all the ridiculous things he’d seen walk in and out of the bar in his run there.

"I'd be very interested to see what kind of art you can turn that into. Maybe you'd like to show me sometime?" Martin's words are open and friendly.

Gerry eyes him for a minute, hiding behind a long taste of his drink. He's trying to suss out Martin's motivations, for his kindness and general geniality. The drink is good and it tips Gerry's mood far enough back into cheerfulness that he shrugs off his considerations for the time being.

"You know what," Gerry quips back. "I think I would like to show you sometime. How 'bout tonight."

It's not a question really, with Gerry's typical force of personality behind it, and he leaves the shop with Martin holding an address in his hand and a time to drag Jon over for dinner that evening.

***

Gerry does not make a big deal of Martin coming over. He acts as if any other friend is coming over for dinner.

He tidies, a little. Lights a few candles. Wears pants. The bare minimum really.

He isn't trying to impress anyone, he tells himself sternly.

Except he is, obviously. He doesn't know Martin very well yet, but he does want to keep Jon around, and they are a packaged deal these days. Which he was happy with, truly.

In their limited interaction, Martin had been sweet and put Gerry instantly at ease. He knows, from many years of working a bar, how to spot a dipshit, and feels confident in his assessment of Martin's character.

But, it's his own character that concerns him. People don't always like Gerry past surface interactions. He can be tempestuous and moody, and catching him tired is a pretty bad idea. The combination of artist and mommy issues can be jarring.

He desperately wants those things to not bother Martin though. He wants Martin to like him, and he's not interested in putting on a show to make it happen.

It occurs to Gerry an hour before they're due that he doesn't even remotely know what takeout to order for dinner.

(He knows what Jon will eat, and he obviously knows what he likes, but what about Martin? Why didn't he ask this morning? Why didn't he ask Jon earlier?)

Gerry is just starting to really panic about all the life choices leading up to this moment, when he gets a text from an unknown number, instantly filling him with relief.

Martin: Since you're hosting this time, I'll grab the take-out. Jon says you like Thai, I'll bring that. You got the drinks covered?

Gerry: As long as you drink either coffee, vodka, or water, yes.

Martin: I'm sorry, I subsist only on the blood of virgins.

Gerry: Oh dear. I couldn't tempt you to settle for Earl Grey?

Martin: Hmmm, yes, I'll accept your offerings this time.

***

The first knock comes right on time. Gerry, dressed in his best paint-stained jeans and cherry blossom kimono, opens the door with a flourish.

Martin allows himself to be welcomed in and hands the food off to the dramatic artist, who deposits it on the table where he has already set the tea tray.

"No Jon? Not that I mind quality ‘us’ time, of course."

Martin is busy taking in the rambling studio space and barely spares the attention to respond, although he manages a blush at the flirty tone. "He's, uh, running late. Work stuff. You know Jon."

Gerry smirks at that. "I do indeed. Is it a 'stumble in at 3am' late, or 'we could probably wait to eat' late?"

"Hmmm? Oh, let's wait a bit? If you don't mind." Martin seems equally taken with his painting wall and his book wall and keeps trading his attention between the two. The paintings, being the larger attraction, eventually win, and he meanders over to study them closer.

"Do you keep all the completed paintings around?" His voice is soft and reverent, and Gerry feels a rush of pride for his work.

"For a while. I like to make sure they're in their final forms before I release them into the wild." Martin blinks big brown eyes at him, before grinning and giggling slightly.

"You're very talented. Jon said as much, showed me the pictures, but words and photos are nothing compared to seeing the real thing." Martin really regards his paintings as if they're special, and rather than the prickly feeling of appraisal he feels during gallery nights, it fills Gerry with warmth.

He turns to examine the wall himself. It's filled with an eclectic group at the moment. Large abstracts made by pouring paint and then layering designs over, three-dimensional pieces painted and then embroidered or quilled over in select places, including a particularly wild eye design. Surreal faces and scenes that seem realistic except for the wild subject matter of planets in meadows and chimeras going to battle.

"Is this what comes from your adventures in bartending?" Martin asks Gerry, turning from the wall and towards the slightly taller man.

"That, and my traumatic childhood." Gerry makes sure to laugh at the last, taking the edge off the small confession.

"Obviously." Martin offers.

"Obviously." Gerry accepts.

***

Gerry and Martin drink tea on the floor while they wait for Jon. Gerry gently prods Martin through the story of how he came to open the bookstore. The blonde man even softly confessing that he had to lie on his CV to get the librarian gig at Magnus.

"How old are you? How did you convince them you had a Master's degree?" Gerry is incredulous. Not that he doesn't think Martin could have an advanced degree. But in paranormal research? Gerry hadn't even known that was an option.

"That's the thing! I'm only 29 now . I worked there for five years!" Martin's voice pitches up in disbelief. "I'm still in shock that anyone ever brought it. Desperate times, desperate measures, you know?"

"I do, actually." Gerry shifts slightly, adjusting his balance with the long remembered urge to flee from those desperate times. He fiddles with his teacup to distract himself. He brought this particular set from a pawn shop because the filigree and florals appealed to his love of colour theory. Soft pinks and corals warm against the cool aqua background.

"Jon says you wanted to go to art school when you two were younger."

It's not a question, but merely Martin offering the same space for openness that Gerry had given him.

"I never went. After my A-levels, I had to get away, and I never really stopped moving for long enough to go to uni when I was younger. Now I'm settled and it's not important to me anymore. Besides, no one asks for a copy of my phantom degree when I sell a painting. So I'm happy with how things turned out for the most part." He stops to consider the outline of a possible past for a moment, one where he didn't have to skip college and go ten years without seeing Jon. "Besides, can you imagine a 27-year-old in art school? The young ones would sacrifice me for more creative talent."

Their eyes meet for a moment, and then they laugh easily and move on to different topics, sliding through the easy stages of getting to know each other.

***

Jon does eventually arrive, looking panicked and harried. He de-ages 10 years when he finds them laughing and relaxed instead of tense and awkward.

So, the three of them eat cold Thai take out on the floor of Gerry's loft, leaning against the perfectly good couch. They share the odd intimacy of people who have known each other for very disjointed amounts of time but like each other just the same.

[mysticsparklewings]

Sparkle By the Sea

Pardon me as I just barely squeeze a MerMay piece of art in. I'll be honest with you guys, I've been pretty lacking in artistic motivation since NaPoWriMo ended. Although if you've noticed my lack of uploads, you probably could've already guessed that.  This isn't abnormal for the aftermath of a month-long challenge for me, especially with a brand-new video game calling my name at every moment of the day, but even so I feel like this particular motivation drought was a bit different. Part of it definitely had to do with the changes to DeviantArt that I'm sure I don't need to remind everyone of, but that's been more of me dreading seeing what the state of the community is than anything else. (However, I have noticed I'm not a fan of the new tag system over the old category one, as confusing as the category system could be sometimes.) Rather, I think this lake of motivation has more to do with the fact that being largely absent from all social media during NaPo reminded me...well, that I hate social media. This is really a bigger discussion for a journal or something, but suffice to say it did not feel good to realize just how many literal hours I had previously been spending trying to desperately to scrape up just a little bit of support on other social media platforms (namely Twitter), versus the more natural growth I see here on dA that also feels a lot more genuine and less forced/obligatory. I can't really explain it, but that reminder/realization really helped my brain slip back into a place where I felt like creating again. And with that, I'll transition into talking about the art and save the social media talk for, as I said, a journal or something later on. Naturally, I've been seeing a lot of mermaid art this month and every year I feel the urge to get in on the fun, though I know better than to try actually doing the MerMay Challenge (especially not this year after having just done NaPo), so I usually either do a one-off drawing or if I'm too busy with other projects I just skip it. But I was starting to feel that need to make art in my brain again and I've had a specific set of stickers from the dollar store sitting in my stash for quite a while now that more or less sealed the deal for me. How do these stickers fit into the mix? Well, I originally fell in love with/picked them up because they are mermaid-themed and absolutely adorable--See for yourself! And I thought they would make for nice decals in a book project since they're wall stickers and therefore repositionable with minimal adhesive-yuck. And at first, I thought maybe I'd end up making them into said hypothetical book project in time for MerMay...except that felt a little cheap in combination with my lack of uploads. Did I really want to come back with a book project featuring mermaids I didn't even draw? And for MerMay of all things? So I sat on the idea and left the stickers out where I could see them, and eventually I sat down and took a closer look at them. The art style, upon further inspection, actually didn't look like it would be too far outside my usual art-making realms...Most of the coloring looks a lot like watercolor, except for the skin which I thought was flat and smooth like alcohol marker and the glitter accents which from my perspective pretty much had to be digital, but could potentially be replicated with glittery/metallic supplies... And that was the moment the idea hatched.  I decided I'd try drawing a mermaid myself in the same style. This would work for MerMay, have something to do with the stickers, and based on my plans would work well for me as a mixed-media project, which as I'm sure I've said before is where I think my artistic talent shines best. I thought the scariest part was going to be replicating the looser and less strict line style, and to a point it was, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. I find it's usually kind of tricky to explain this, but really what this part of the process boils down to for me (if I'm replicating an existing style and not using my own), is really just studying the original artwork(s) and looking for patterns, then trying to stick to those patterns. For example, the style here features fairly large & rounded faces, and the hands are more like hand-shaped mittens (which was great news by the way because hands are always a pain in the butt for me), so I did my best to emulate those features. As per usual, I did start with a sketch, but I tried to keep it looser than usual, and then when I did the inking I started with my 0.2 Micron, again trying to keep things loose and no be too fussy if I could help it. Then I went back with a brush tip liner from Prismacolor to get more natural variation in the lines and to force myself to not have quite so much control over the line weight. I was also very careful with my choice of liners because I knew pretty much everything except the skin was going to see a lot of watercolors, which meant the lines had to be waterproof. And of course, I went with watercolor paper (my nice 100% cotton stuff this time) to make sure I didn't have any issues with blending or layering. Now, at this stage, I didn't know what I was going to do for the background, though I was leaning towards the idea of making one separately and placing the mermaid on top afterward, as sort of a nod to the original mermaids being stickers. But I wasn't totally sure yet. What I was sure of was how scared I was to just dive into coloring. The sketching and inking and gone so well I was thinking I was in for a rude awakening at any moment. So, just in case, I scanned my uncolored lines as a fall-back if I royally screwed up. With my paranoid mind set at ease (for the most part), I could begin with color application. I started with the skin since it was the easiest; Just one good layer of alcohol marker, leaving a little white space here and there like the artwork I was emulating. Although 1. The marker color turned out a bit darker than I was expecting and later blended too well with her tail, so I had to lighten it in Photoshop, and 2. because watercolor paper really soaks up the ink, I ended up with less white space than I thought I would. But beyond that, this step went off without a hitch. So then came the second-scariest part: The watercolor. I used a mixture of my Master's Touch watercolors and Mermaid Markers (yes, that was a very conscious supply choice ) and tried to take my time and be mindful of the color balance I was looking for. I'd decided ahead of time that I wanted to try and stick with a soft-ish palette like the original art, but I still wanted my choices to be different. Since yellow/gold is featured in the original but not used for a tail color, that's what I went with, and I opted for the blue-y-purple hair since a soft blue and purple are also prominent in the original and based on color-theory would be a nice contrast to the gold-orange tail. Though I did also try to get some pink in both the tail and the hair for a bit of unity and calling back to the pink in the original art. The trickiest part with the coloring was actually the tiny lips and blush spots. I ended up using a fluorescent pink for that turned out as more of a red originally and had to be touched-up via Photoshop because of that and also because of the lightening I did to the skin. It's more that it was a bit of a challenge to get the shapes of these much smaller areas right and in the correct place, since I had to use very minimal pencil markings, lest I end up with nasty graphite marks mixed into the paint. Getting the hair to be dark enough without being extreme compared to the rest of the drawing was also a great test of patience, but it ultimately worked out, I think. I also had a hard time deciding what color the piece of coral in her hair should be, which is why it ended up as this vague dusky-orange color. And I got more pink on the sand dollar next to it than I intended, but neither of those things is a huge deal. While I waited for all that to dry though, I had to decide how I was going to go about tackling all that extreme sparkle the original art had. I could have just added it in digitally and not even attempted it traditionally, but everything else had gone so smoothly that I decided to push my luck this time. Originally, I started with just glittery gel pens, but I found pretty quickly that they were sinking back into the colors underneath them too much and thus just weren't doing what I wanted. I wanted high-impact sparkle. After some brief consideration, I turned to the metallic watercolor sets I have made by Art Philosophy, which are very high-impact metallic and pretty opaque, which would work well over my failed gel pen and would work wonders for the areas where I wanted that high-impact over an opposing color. (I.E. Where I wanted the blue sparkle over a very orange-yellow area, which would normally make brown mud if the color on top wasn't opaque.) The funny part about that is that I originally used a different shade of purple and gold for those areas of sparkle that I ended up completely covering with different shades (the purple needed to be lighter and the gold needed to be darker/more gold and less yellow). And her eye shadow cover saw all three colors before I settled; The purple just seemed wrong, and the gold blended too well with her skin. I thought the blue wouldn't work so close to her blue hair, but it actually ended up looking the best out of the three. Although, I do have to make a full disclosure that the high-impact sparkle you see here is in fact where I went in and re-did it digitally once I scanned the artwork in. Unfortunately, glitter and metallic supplies just don't scan very well and usually end up looking too dark, dull, or flat by comparison. The metallic paints work just fine in person since you can move the art and see how they reflect the light, but it just doesn't work in a still image that's been captured by having a bright light uniformly shined over it. Still, re-tooling the sparkle digitally ended up being an interesting challenge, especially since it's been a fairly long time since I was messing with digital textures like this. Also worth noting is that I had to re-paint some of the metallic areas because they weirdly lifted off onto the plastic cover I used to protect the art when I pressed it onto the background to make the glue stick. I'm not sure if it's because those were the extra-layered areas and they hadn't fully dried all the way down to the paper, or if that particularly plastic just picks up this metallic paint really easily or what. And speaking of that background... Like I said earlier, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do for a background for a while, but after reviewing my mermaid-centric Pinterest board I decided a simple rock seat and something to vaguely suggest the ocean/water without getting too detailed would suffice just fine. Based on that, I felt like using gouache would work nicely (and I just really felt like using the gouache since I don't find a lot of opportunities to use it) and that a color scheme that flipped her hair and tail colors would be best for the effect I wanted. I've found I really like the Strathmore 400 series mixed media paper for gouache because of how smooth it is, so I cut a piece down to size and got busy. For the most part, I just kind of went in with the colors doing whatever felt right, and trying to use some gouache I'd already mixed from past projects (since gouache can be reactivated and I've found this kind, in particular, seems to reactivate really nicely) either on their own or to mix the colors I felt like I needed. And I also tried to do a lot of blending straight on the paper to get more variations in color and make things a bit more lively. Oddly enough, this ended up being a good example of gouache's covering power because I accidentally started applying the colors upside down--using more greens and blues on top and more pinky-purple on the bottom--and not only had to flip the paper around but also had to do a fair amount of covering the colors I'd already put down with colors you don't really want to mix with them because they don't make very pretty results.  But it worked out just fine, so yay! I also added some clouds for a little extra ambiance, which I think looks quite nice. Believe it or not, the most difficult thing about the background was the rocks. I spent far longer than I care to admit (or bothered to document, for that matter) trying and in many ways failing to mix the proper shades of gray I wanted, and the end result didn't turn out quite as clean and graphic as I had hoped, but by the time I put the mermaid on top, you really can't tell because you can only see a fraction of what's actually there.  And I mean, the end result isn't terrible, it's just not quite what I was picturing in my mind's eye is all. Personally, I know it's kind of an odd choice, but I really like how there's no defining line between the water and the sky, and yet you still get a clear idea that they're separate and the rocks aren't just floating in space. I'm not sure how, but I think I'd like to work with this kind of ambiguity more often. It's like a step between abstract and more structured art. Anyway. With the background done, the next step was to attach the mermaid, which I felt like doing in a more 3D and less flat manner, so I chopped up a cardboard box that previously held a chocolate bunny I had on hand and glued some pieces together to boost the mermaid up a bit. This where those deep shadows between her and the background are coming from.   Here I feel the need to insert a comment about how difficult it was to get my tacky glue to dispense the glue for me, though there's a chance this is because I need to poke the opening in the tip to be a bit wider. (You have to poke it open yourself and I always felt like I never did get it open quite enough...unless you like strenuous hand exercises...) Of course, once all the above was done then I had to scan the art in, which I was admittedly a bit nervous about after the incident with the plastic cover peeling off the metallic paint (though fortunately, the scanner glass didn't have the same effect), and then all that was left wad the digital retouches. Overall, I'm really happy with how this turned out. It doesn't blend in as well as I originally wanted it to with the original art, but in the end, that doesn't really bother me. It's just a nice piece of art on its own that is also unique from what I normally do...except it's still got a lot of similar elements to how I normally make art. It feels a lot like the days when all I made was fanart. The key difference here is that I know myself better as an artist now and thus can use that knowledge to my advantage. I can't promise this a return to regular posting for me, though I do hope it's a gateway to me posting more frequently at least, but I can say I do intend on getting back to working on art more often and therefore being more present online again. At the very least, I can happily tell you guys that I have a couple of new art supplies en route to me that I've been wanting for a while and am excited to share with you once they arrive.  If nothing else, we at least have that to look forward to! ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[itispossibleihaveissues]

Another Perfect Catastrophe -1

AUTHOR: Mikimoo PAIRING: JayDick RATING: Mature

WARNINGS: Non Consensual drug use, Non Consensual touching, Non Consensual kissing, humour, slight mayhem

SUMMARY: Dick goes undercover as himself in order to catch a gang of international thieves. Jason reluctantly tags along as his long suffering bodyguard. During the ensuing mayhem they get to know each other again and build a few bridges.

Thank you to burkesl17 for the beta!

Notes: An embarrassingly long time ago, the amazing and very, very talented Pentapus invited me to do a reverse bang style exchange, and drew me an amazing prompt. I have no idea how this story was the one that emerged from the many options I had, but such is the creative process I guess! Anyhoo, many thanks to Pentapus for both encouragement and patience, and of course the incredible art! (which will be included at the end of the appropriate chapter)

GO HERE FOR THE AMAZING ART BY THE AWESOME PENTAPUS! 

This was a cluster-fuck. An epic, tragic, mess of ridiculous proportions. It was the sort of thing that only seemed to happen to Jason.

“Gosh, your eyes are pretty,” Dick said, as Jason dragged him bodily towards where he thought the entrance to the wine cellar was. According to the blueprints and the literature he had read on the house and estate, there was an old smugglers tunnel that led to the coast and freedom. He was just fervently hoping it was still accessible.

“Were they always that color?” Dick slurred, petting the button on Jason's cuff and staring blearily at his ear.

“Come on, you drugged up moron,” Jason growled. He was looking forward to giving Dick a hard time about this later, but right now he was a real pain in the ass. Jason spotted the cellar door, and hauled Dick towards it. They had enough of a lead, they could do this and get away before the hired goons caught up to them. He propped Dick against the wall, ignoring the way the fool slid down to the floor with a whoosh of breath.

The hatch was held shut with a rusty padlock and it clearly hadn't been used in some time. Hopefully his picks would make short work of it. If they could open it, they could leave less of a trail than if he had to break it off. Unfortunately Jason just wasn't that lucky, he never fucking was.

“Come on, come on,” he chanted under his breath, as his picks caught the inner workings of the lock but wouldn't budge. “Come on,” he grunted, and with a particularly hard tug it finally gave and the padlock sprang open.

“Come on, come on, turn your radio on!” Dick sang at the top of his lungs and wildly out of tune.

So much for gaining time by being sneaky. At least the sound had bounced around the wide courtyard. Jason yanked Dick to his feet and bundled him into the open hatch. His feeling of relief was short lived though, when he felt a sudden impact in his neck. He pulled free the small dart and stared at it.

“Fuck.”

 This had all been Bruce's fault.

The mission had been a simple one, be bait for a gang of very ambitious thieves praying on the stupidly rich. They operated in Europe as well as the US, and their last sting had hit members of the Gotham elite. Normally Jason wouldn't bother with offering an assist getting justice for a bunch of super rich crooks and morons. But there was a sexual and sadistic element to the hits that put them on Jason's shit list. Their victims were both male and female, and the violence often extended to younger family members. Drugs were the method used to extract bank details and subdue the targets, so the assaults were just for 'fun' rather than a tactic to gain anything.

Jason hadn't been planning to go after them, as he was aware Batman was looking into it. But when Bruce contacted him and demanded he lend his aid in that no-nonsense tone that was his version of asking for a favor, Jason went, despite his knee jerk reaction to tell the Bat to fuck off. He could admit he was curious - why would B be asking for his help?

 Turned out it wasn't just him. Jason had been unimpressed to find Dick there already, and Dick had displayed an equal lack of enthusiasm. Apparently Bruce hadn't bothered to share his plan with his Golden Boy either. He had also failed to mention to Jason that he was injured; one leg was immobilized by a hi-tech cast and there were bruises and burns on his face. Some hair on the back of his head was singed off to the scalp.

The sight caused all sorts of bad feelings to swim in Jason's gut – how close had he come this time? Bruce was ridiculously good at what he did, but it only took one lucky shot. What would they do when the day came when he didn't dodge fast enough? Why did Jason even care?

“We've figured out they're going to hit London next,” Bruce said, without preamble. “I was planning on going with Damian, but the events of the last week mean that Dick has to go in my stead.”

“So he and the spawn are off to Europe? Why do you need me?” Jason asked.

Dick scowled at him with real anger behind his expression, “Damian got hurt too, he can't go on a trip when he looks like he spent time in a meat grinder, because he was blown up.” That last was growled at Bruce, and Jason realized Dick wasn't actually mad at him at all, he was upset about whatever had happened with the previous case. Bruce ignored Dick's tone, words and expression with the ease of someone who did it all the time, and went back to bringing up mission info on the computer.

“I ask again, why am I here?” Jason said into the frigid silence.

“Nightwing needs backup, and Richard needs a bodyguard.”

“I don't.”

“Don't be difficult for the sake of it, Dick, we don't have time. Richard Grayson wouldn't be without one, not after all the kidnap attempts.”

It was disconcerting to hear Bruce talk about Dick in three separate parts, perhaps it really was just that easy for Bruce to be different people when the situation called for it. Jason knew it was next to impossible for him to be like that, and he suspected it wasn't easy for Dick either.

Dick stalked a little closer, coiled violence in his movements and tension practically coming off him in waves. “There are lots of options for that role, at the very least you could have let me choose for myself.”

“So, I'm just useful as big, dumb muscle, is that it?” Jason demanded. He hated that this kind of crap was the only thing Bruce ever wanted from him, but in some small part of his heart he still got an annoying but persistent thrill when the old man asked him for help in that angry, blunt and almost stilted way he had. It was the sad and pathetic remnants of his past hero worship. “And I don't even get the courtesy of being asked nicely? Fuck you both.” He hoped that didn't sound as petty or hurt to them as it did to his own ears. But it wasn't like he didn't have his own shit to deal with; this was a waste of his time.

He was surprised when Dick caught up to him as he re-entered the house, he had expected them to be punching each other’s lights out by now.

“Jason, wait.”

“Not interested.”

“Bruce is an ass, I wish he hadn't sprung this on us.” Dick reached out and lay his warm fingers on Jason's wrist, then withdrew his hand when Jason scowled at them. “And him being a control freak was no excuse for me being a shit to you about it.” That statement looked like it had been hard to say, admitting to being a douchebag wasn't easy for anyone it seemed.

“Fine, apology accepted. But I have shit to do, Dick.”

“He's an ass, but, annoyingly, he's also right,” Dick said, with a slightly sour twist to his lips.

“How?”

“I will need back up, and a bodyguard, for show.” He shrugged. “I already have some ideas for the first part of the operation, but I’ll probably need some help planning the rest.”

“You never need help planning,” Jason said, failing to keep the scorn from his voice. “What's your angle?”

“Just a feeling, a hunch maybe? Or perhaps I'm still rattled by last week. We nearly lost Damian and Bruce at once, I don't feel up to taking chances, you know?”

Jason grunted. He was going to regret saying yes, but not as much as if he said no and something happened he could have prevented. And if he was being honest, it was gratifying to hear Dick admit he wanted help, whether he needed it or not. “Fine, when and where?”

“Here, two days. We'll fly to London and try and get this wrapped up. Thanks, Jay.” He grinned a bright smile up at Jason, and Jason felt the first stirring of real trepidation.

 “No,” Dick said when Jason arrived at the manor to pick him up and drive him to the airport.

Jason squashed the urge to say 'yes', just to be contrary and instead ground his teeth together and waited for Dick to elaborate. It didn't help that Dick literally looked like a million dollars. Instead of the usual shaggy mess, he was sporting what Jason suspected was a $600 haircut, it changed his appearance slightly, added a touch of arrogance and artifice to his natural good looks. He was also wearing vastly overpriced designer jeans and a tight polo in baby pink. Jason sort of wanted to smack him for the price tag on the pants alone.

Dick gestured at Jason's suit. “This isn't what I want.”

“Oh?” Jason ground out, “You had something else in mind for me? Don't want to be seen with underdressed help?” It was a decent suit, one he had had fitted for those occasions where he had to dress up. It wasn't Bruce level good, but it wasn't from Walmart either.

“Quite the contrary. We have to make a splash, get noticed be scandalous!” He beckoned Jason further inside, and when he dragged his heels slightly, Dick grabbed hold of his sleeve and tugged him into the bowels of the house, dislodging a cufflink in the process.

“Dammit, Dick. Stop manhandling me!”

“Sorry, but we have a flight to catch.”

Jason's eyes rolled before he could stop them. “Like they wouldn't wait for you, rich boy.”

Dick grinned at him, the expression was challenging rather than friendly. “I'm not well known in London. The people there who know Bruce don't visit the right circles, they're more old money, while we need young, stupid and filthy rich.” He paused to usher Jason into the study, the one Bruce had for show, rather than use. “We need to get the right kind of attention, fast. That means we gotta be a little outrageous. That and throw around cash like it’s going out of style.”

He gave Jason another one of those challenging, sharp smiles, and pointed a perfectly manicured finger at a pile of clothes draped haphazardly over the nineteenth century chaise lounge. “Wear that.”

Jason wanted to object on principle, but he supposed he should have a look first; his only concession to avoiding a fist fight before they even got out of the country.

He poked through the clothes curiously. The outfit Dick had picked out for him was like a less beat up, more designer version of his normal wear. The leather jacket was a thing of beauty; it smelled like money and class, but it looked like something he might choose for himself. “Why this?” he asked, not willing to show his complete bemusement.

“Two reasons, both practical,” Dick said, leaning his butt against Bruce's hand carved desk. “Get changed and I'll explain my thinking.”

Jason wasn't necessarily shy about shucking his pants in front of folks, he grew up having to hit the showers with the goddamn Justice League after all. (And let it be said that seeing Superman in the buff was not what a gangly, half grown teenager needed for his wobbly self-esteem.) But there was still something that made him profoundly uncomfortable about stripping down in front of Dick.

He wasn't going to let that show, though, and instead he casually removed his suit jacket and dropped his slacks. Dick didn't seem to be paying any attention, so Jason relaxed slightly as he pulled on the pants Dick had provided. “And?” he prompted starting on his button up.

“Two very practical reasons” Dick repeated. “Number one, while I'm playing nice with the socialites it makes sense for you to do some sneaking, and for that it would be best if you had your gear. If people are used to you kitted out in this get up, it won't look so suspicious if they catch you lurking around wearing leather.”

“Uh huh,” Jason agreed, he was having some significant trouble pulling on the t-shirt Dick had provided. “I think this is the wrong size, Dickhead,” he said, tugging the hem over his abs. He could feel the material pull at the shoulders, but it didn't feel like it would restrict movement too much.

“That brings us to reason number two,” Dick said brightly as a predatory grin grew on his face. “To get the sort of attention we need, we have to stand out. My bodyguard needs to be sexy as well as scary. People should make terrible assumptions.” He stalked towards Jason who had the sudden urge to back up. Dick whipped out a comb from somewhere in his sinfully tight jeans and attacked Jason's hair without further warning.

“Oi!”

“Hold still, Jason!”

“I draw the line at you fucking with my hair, Dick!” Jason batted him away. “You can dress me like a damn doll if it pleases you, but the hair is sacrosanct!”

Dick looked like he was going to lunge at him again, but then he seemed to think better of it. “Fine,” he said, shaking his own hair out of his eyes. “You look the part, that's good enough for me.”

“Oh thanks so much, Dick, I'm so very flattered,” Jason grumbled as they headed for the car. It turned out Dick had also packed a spare suitcase for him, no doubt filled with obscenely tight T-shirts and overpriced pants. But after some internal debate he decided not to argue the point. Dick was clearly in a bossy mood and Jason would save the fighting for when it mattered.

Or when it was most obnoxious, he wasn't above being petty.

[lexyeevee]

Correcting the record

Some people are saying some things again, and I don't really have a masterpost of why those things are off the mark, so here is one. I guess I'll update this if anything else spicy crosses my radar, for ease of linking.

(That doesn't mean to send me new things; I don't need to be kept constantly up to date on the latest hot takes from Breitbart Jr.)

I know this is long, which means most people won't bother to read it. But hey, that means it must be true, right? That's how it works for callouts, so surely it works the same way here.

Foreword

KiwiFarms is a forum that grew out of a wiki dedicated to the sustained stalking and harassment of an autistic trans woman. Their biggest subforum is called "lolcows", referring to the idea that certain people are valued only for the forum's ability to squeeze mockery out of them.

This is the source of much of the scandalous "truth" about glip and myself.

They don't lie, not exactly. Instead, they find a single tweet or sentence somewhere, then concoct a story that fills in the details. That way, they can present the original source as "proof". A casual reader will notice that the source matches their story, and take the story as true. The source doesn't prove the story, but that's a subtle distinction.

Sometimes they'll even claim that the source says something slightly different than it actually does, and still most people won't notice. Maybe the order of sentences gets reversed. Maybe "this will happen" is spun into "I want this to happen". Close enough.

Once they have one reason we're horrible, they can take for granted that we're horrible, which justifies interpreting the next snippet as proving that we're horrible. The more horrible we appear to be, the easier it is to justify digging ever deeper.

They collect mountains of these stories, which makes it very difficult to push back. No matter how many individual tales we respond to, there will always be more. It's actually a well-known poor debating tactic, but it works.

A huge post about how awful someone is looks like a documentary, even though it's carefully constructed to only "report" on things to make the subject look bad. Things we've disproven or apologized for years ago still show up in callouts. Just a few days ago, I saw someone link a post that didn't even exist any more; it had been replaced by an apology. Neither the person who linked it nor the person they linked it to seemed to notice this.

Juicy gossip spreads very quickly, both among people who love gossip and people who genuinely want to do the right thing. Retractions and corrections are boring; nobody spreads those. Besides, if you spread something awful about someone, and it turns out to be false, what does that say about you? Once you've spread gossip, if you want to save face, it's in your best interest to insist the gossip is true — whether it really is or not.

Other people are discouraged from pushing back on our behalf, since that risks attracting the same scrutiny. Besides, if you try to say someone isn't abusive, you may get called an abuse apologist. That makes no sense at all, but it doesn't matter.

And there's no downside to doing any of this. If something false spreads to thousands of people, who's accountable for it? Nobody. You can outright make things up about people and nothing bad will happen to you — but if it's just a misunderstanding, all the better.

Keep all that in mind as you read this.

glip did not refer to autistic people as emotionless robots

Let's start out with a particularly great example of callouts in action. The log screenshot used as "proof" that glip said this about autistic people actually proves it false, because the conversation was:

pk: know what also pk: the section on sociopaths was creepy pk: they’re like emotionless robots

glip/eevee didn't really self-diagnose as autistic

It's weird to be accused both of thinking we're autistic and of insulting autistic people.

But no, not really? We've both observed that lists of symptoms are conspicuously familiar. We don't make any effort to call ourselves autistic, we don't claim to know anything about autism, and our lives haven't changed as a result of this observation.

I don't really get why people care about self-diagnosis anyway. I "self-diagnosed" with ADD before going to a psych who then regular-diagnosed me with ADD and gave me magic brain pills for it.

eevee did not put glip's boobs online

Another good example, though I don't think this ever spread beyond the confines of the forum thread.

I have a public filedump, full of files. One file is called "bewbs.jpg", and unsurprisingly is a photo of some boobs. Someone assumed the photo was of glip's boobs, and so it became truth.

Surprise! It's not. I don't know who's in the photo. It's some image I found online, probably over a decade ago. I don't have the slightest idea why I uploaded it. You can even check out the metadata and see that it was saved from Photoshop 4, which I've never used. Also, Photoshop 5 came out in 1998, when glip was 8, so... prooobably not them.

our cats poop a lot i guess

No, seriously, I've heard this complaint. Our cats do poop a lot, but I'm not really sure what it's supposed to say about us, or what we're supposed to do about it. Corks?

glip is not abusive

The "abusive" label is usually ascribed to a massive callout post by PengoSolvent, but he never said that. He did say "potentially abusive", but left the conclusion up in the air. The difference seems significant.

Oh, and he later recanted, and he's now on good terms with glip. Turns out it was all a series of misunderstandings.

Also, I've been dating glip for nearly a decade now and I'm pretty happy with them, but for some reason, nobody seems to think that counts for anything.

fieldoftheother's level 100 post is bad

Previously.

glip is not trying to get kids to see their porn

I've seen a couple people cite this line from the Discord, claiming it means glip wants 13-year-olds to read forflor:

my legacy will be 13 year olds secretly reading forbiddenflora and realizing they're gay and/or trans

But this was said because people were talking about having themselves been young teenagers who secretly looked at porn and realized they were gay or trans. It was a tongue-in-cheek observation: teenagers will look at porn one way or another, and if they read forflor, its themes may very well jostle some realizations.

I've also been told that glip must want everyone who reads the main comic to also read the porn, because they put character development in the porn. But if that were the case, why would they have the sites separate in the first place? How would anyone even know there's porn, just from reading the main site? The only place that even comes close to linking is in a heavily-disclaimered blurb at the bottom of a few character profiles, on the volunteer-edited wiki, which neither of us even knew about until someone told me in response to this very post. This makes no sense as a master scheme.

The truth is much more mundane: glip feels attached to their characters and likes to make comics with character development.

It is true that glip doesn't care if teenagers seek out their porn. I don't care either? We're not your parents, and we have no way of stopping determined horny teens anyway. It's tagged and separated so people who don't want to see it don't have to, but if you're trying to seek out porn then that's your own business. Just, uh, please don't try to talk to us about it, that's super weird.

glip drew a porn comic with an underage character, but...

This is true. They later took the comic down, and they've since talked about how it was a way of wrangling with their own experiences with CSA.

glip is not transphobic

I think people say glip is transphobic because their comic has a girl with a dick who doesn't hate her dick?

Well, er, newsflash: not all trans girls hate their dicks? It seems like this complaint is implying glip should only depict stereotypical self-hating trans characters, and I don't really understand how that's any kind of improvement.

Ironically, I've seen this claimed multiple times by people who refer to glip with the wrong pronoun.

glip's irc does not prey on children

Someone we knew as spaggledagger claimed that people hit strongly on her on our IRC, despite knowing that she was only 13 and had never had any kind of sexual interaction. She also claimed to have gone to the police and asked them some details.

I've been over this before, but the short version is:

She never mentioned she was 13 until the day she left the IRC for good (because of alleged ageism on our part — she'd invited a friend and the two of them were being incredibly disruptive). On the contrary, she made frequent reference to drinking and having had sex, so by all accounts she presented herself as an adult.

The thing she says the police told her is technobabble. It makes no sense at all.

We cannot find any shred of evidence of the conversations she says she had. However, we did find one thing she claimed was said to her — it was in public, and wasn't directed at her at all.

She mentioned having lied to get an ex-boyfriend in trouble. We also got a message from the moderator of another small community who'd interacted with her before, warning us that she tried to get back at them for banning her by claiming elsewhere that she'd been abused.

She claimed to be paranoid because we mentioned living near her, but she told us where she lived, after someone else in the channel mentioned living in the same area. We've never lived anywhere near either of them.

So this was someone with (by her own admission!) a history of lying to screw over older people, who never told us her age, who supposedly got incomprehensible advice from police, and whose few concrete details were completely wrong.

This particular claim appears to be a total fabrication. To get back at us for not wanting her friend around, I guess?

eevee does not support legalizing child porn

I once read an article that argued for it, and I said "I'm not sure I disagree" — referring to the argument, which was that outlawing a photo of one particular kind of crime was inconsistent. I'm bothered by inconsistency, but obviously it wasn't right to just legalize child porn, therefore the argument must be wrong. So I thought about it out loud.

That's why I also asked someone why a photo of a particular type of crime should be illegal. It wasn't rhetorical; I genuinely wanted to know what the other person thought about the inconsistency.

I wasn't especially clear about this at the time, and it didn't occur to me that my lazy phrasing could be taken as active support for abolishing the law. It was also pretty insensitive to treat a serious topic like debate club — especially one that almost certainly had impacted some of my audience. I know I upset a couple people, and I'm sorry for that.

The tweets have since been dug up and transformed via a game of telephone to "supports legalizing child porn", "has talked extensively about legalizing child porn", and straight up "is a pedophile". Sorry, no. I just like nitpicking, and I made a very poor choice of thing to nitpick.

I've also tweeted about this before.

eevee is not trying to help kids to look at porn

In a FurAffinity journal from 2009, I played armchair lawyer over FA's handling of minors and their access to porn. FA had (and, I assume, still has?) a policy that if an admin finds out a user is underage, their account will be prevented from seeing porn — "agelocked" — until they turn 18. This was usually said to be for legal reasons. I was saying there weren't any legal reasons.

The claim is thus that I wanted teenagers to look at porn for some kind of nefarious reasons. I don't know what those reasons could be? I didn't even draw porn at the time, so it's not like I was trying to lure anybody in or whatever. My actual motives were much more mundane:

I like nitpicking. See above.

I'd seen a few cases where people had done some very invasive snooping to find someone's age. I thought that kind of near-stalking — especially targeted at someone already suspected to be underage — was pretty creepy, and I saw the policy as encouraging it.

glip had been drawing porn since they were 16, mostly in the form of commissions, and at one point had been agelocked. They were 19 when I made the post, so it was still relatively fresh in my mind, and I was annoyed that the policy had landed squarely on glip's main source of income.

(That said, FA is a rickety thing, and I don't think they'd ever tried to agelock a porn artist before. I believe the result was that glip could still post porn, but then not see their own work. I don't know if that was ever fixed.)

eevee did not let her cat die rather than give him medicine

I heard this one second-hand so I don't know exactly what's being said, but regardless I am fucking livid about it. It boils down to a sentence from my old tumblr:

given that atenolol’s most common side effect is lethargy and styx already spends most of his time asleep i don’t think i’m going to do this

My cat, Styx, started rapidly losing weight around the beginning of April. I spent the next month and several thousand dollars being shuttled between vets, trying to find a cause. At one point I was sent to a cardiologist, who — shockingly — diagnosed him with a heart condition.

He was prescribed atenolol, a beta blocker and the usual treatment for the heart condition. I was hesitant to give it to him, since also on the table was FIP — a disease with no cure and a life expectancy measured in days. Beta blockers can cause lethargy, Styx was already sleeping most of the time, and I didn't want to cost him his last few waking hours for no reason.

I decided to wait a few days for the vet's formal diagnosis. What I got was the post linked above, saying the most likely cause was FIP; the heart condition wasn't even on the list. So, yes, I decided against the vet's recommendation, and did not give him the medication for the condition he probably didn't have that wouldn't have affected him until years later anyway. There was never any indication that the atenolol would've helped his FIP in any way; I interpreted the vet's advice as being just in case he had the heart condition instead.

A week later, the vet finally started talking about looking into experimental treatments for FIP — a full ten days after the first mention of a disease that can kill cats in as much time.

Four days after that, we buried the cat I loved. He'd just been sitting in pools of his own diarrhea — the same thing that had ultimately led a vet to recommend we put down our elderly cat.

That month was by far the worst thing I've ever been through. I did everything I could think to do, burned through cash, spent every waking moment with him, and it wasn't enough. I still can't reread his eulogy; it's the only thing that makes me cry.

Extremely cool that some jerks who are desperate for a reason to hate me are now trying to use my dead cat against me.

eevee/glip are not... usually... mean online

It's not uncommon to see people calling us super mean based on a tweet thread that they've carefully cropped to remove the part where the other person was being an asshole. Maybe check for that first.

We get enough assholery that we have fairly low bars for who qualifies as an asshole, too, so there might be false positives. If that's you, ah, sorry. We try our best!

But also, it's common for someone to be a dick while feigning politeness, and we tend to have little patience for that, whereas other people have seemingly infinite patience for it. If you see us snapping for seemingly no reason, we probably got a very different read off of someone.

Final thoughts

I'm sure there's more, but hopefully this is enough that you're starting to suspect a pattern. Most of what we're called out for is wildly misinterpreted or misreported just enough to be damning.

These are people who misgender us and use glip's old name, then call us transphobic in the same breath. They follow our every public move with bated breath, while being largely anonymous or sockpuppets themselves. They show up as one of the top referrers every time I publish a game on itch. They've dug up a comment I made on a friend's LiveJournal from 2004 and implied nefarious explanations. They archived the entire "styx" tag on my old Tumblr, meaning they read everything I went through and their only takeaway was some new "dirt". They've taken the worst things that have ever happened to both glip and I, and used them as blunt weapons to say we're awful. They put this crap in the Tumblr floraverse tag, inflicting it on people who just want to share fanart. They hide in our IRC and our Discord, waiting for new logs they can post and reinterpret. Only completely locked-down spaces are safe from their obsessive eyes, and they openly speculate about what happens behind closed doors as well.

Does this sound like a reasonable way to behave? If a single person acted this way towards someone else, anyone would be rightly horrified — this is straight up stalking. But people reblog their callouts and never question their tactics. I guess stalking is okay if we "deserve" it, and we deserve it because we're awful, and you know we're awful thanks to the stalking.

Here's my question: if they know all their existing stuff is true, why do they keep looking? Ostensibly they believe that we're both proven to be complete monsters, so what else are they hoping to find? Do you think I accidentally tweeted a confession to a murder? Does my old MySpace contain the plans for an orbital superlaser?

Or look at it this way: who have we hurt in the however many years this has been going on? Where are all the actual victims of our cruelty? Who has been protected by this muckraking, and from what?

They have no interest in what's true, only in what's titillating. It's right there in the name of the forum: "lolcows", not "investigative journalism".

And, hey. If you want to hate us for actual reasons, please go ahead. I'm thoughtless and insensitive at times, and I'm bad at maintaining friendships. glip is short with anyone who appears to be acting in bad faith. We both fuck up sometimes. If any of that has put you off, fine. If you think we're insufficiently horrified by the idea of a 17-year-old somewhere sneakily looking at a drawing of a boob, sure, hate us for that too.

But don't make stuff up to fulfill your power fantasy of defending the world from a cartoon villain. Yeah, you — I'm sure a bunch of Kiwi folks are eating up every word of this post simply because I've written it. Hot tip: the first thing to enter your brain is not automatically the truth. How cruel are you being if you're wrong?

[natashatheknitter]

The knitting community is reckoning with racism

Fiber artists of color are taking to Instagram stories to call out instances of prejudice — and to try to shape a more inclusive future.

By

Jaya Saxena

 Feb 25, 2019, 8:00am EST

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Karen Templer’s Fringe Association Co. is kind of like Goop for knitting. There are tips and how-tos for navigating knitting’s trickier maneuvers. There are knit-alongs for chunky cowls and cute fingerless gloves. There’s an online store that sells the Fringe bag, which has come to be known in some circles as the Birkin of knitting bags. And there’s the blog where Templer puts her personal thoughts.

On January 7, she blogged excitedly about her upcoming trip to India. She wrote that 2019 would be her “year of color.” She said that as a child, India had fascinated her, and that when an Indian friend’s parents offered to take her with them on a trip, it was “like being offered a seat on a flight to Mars.” She spoke of her trip as if it were the biggest hurdle anyone could jump: “If I can go to India, I can do anything — I’m pretty sure.” Templer, it should be noted, is white.

As someone who is mixed-race Indian, to me, her post (though seemingly well-meaning) was like bingo for every conversation a white person has ever had with me about their “fascination” with my dad’s home country; it was just so colorful and complex and inspiring. It’s not that they were wrong, per se, just that the tone felt like they thought India only existed to be all those things for them.

The initial comments on Templer’s blog post were supportive, but quickly, knitters and fans began to criticize her tone. “Karen, I’d ask you to re-read what you wrote and think about how your words feed into a colonial/imperialist mindset toward India and other non-Western countries,” wrote commenter Alex. “Multiple times you compare the idea of going to India to the idea of going to another planet — how do you think a person from India would feel to hear that?”

Templer has since apologized for her post, writing, “It took women of color pointing this out for me to see it ... which is not their responsibility, and I am thankful to them for taking the time,” and that she’d be continuing to raise visibility of people of color (and specifically black/indigenous POC) knitters and their work. (Templer declined to comment for this piece.) But her post triggered a wave of conversations about racism and prejudice in the fiber arts world, which thus far shows no signs of slowing down.

How the conversation started

Odds are if you’re in your 20s or 30s, you have at least one friend who’s gotten really into knitting in the past few years. The ancient craft never went away, but relatively recently, aided by its high Instagrammability, a heightened appreciation of DIY, and everyone’s desperate need to keep their hands busy in an anxiety-inducing world, it became more within the purview of urbane people who know how to flex online.

Social media and the internet have allowed more people than ever to share their love of fiber arts, whether it’s through the ease of exchanging patterns and tips, or just connecting with other people who share the same interests. It’s not just that it makes knitting feel cool; it’s that knitters can find community within a hobby or livelihood that’s often done in solitude.

Social media is also a source of income for many knitters and fiber artists, who use Instagram to promote their Etsy shops, to connect with customers who want commissions, or to interact with brands and blogs. It’s as much socializing as it is networking, whether that means tagging the yarn dyers and pattern makers who made your hat possible, or asking your followers what kinds of things they’d like to see available in your shop.

Social media also makes pointing out racism easier than ever. For weeks, POC knitters have used Instagram, and specifically Instagram stories, to share their observations, tag other knitters, and conduct polls about others’ experiences with racism in the community. Hundreds of people of color have shared stories of being ignored in knitting stores, having white knitters assume they were poor or complete amateurs, or flat-out saying they didn’t think black or Asian people knit.

Templer’s blog post was far from the first time anyone raised the issue of whitewashing in knitting. “I think exactly two years ago, I tried to speak about this,” said Korina Yoo, a 23-year-old Filipina immigrant of mixed heritage living in Portland, Oregon, who shares her knitting via the account @thecolormustard. Grace Anna Farrow (@astitchtowear), a 38-year-old knitter in New Mexico, agreed that she’d seen conversations happen but they didn’t seem to stick. “I feel like the conversations were happening and they just weren’t getting attention, or they were in pockets that were so separated that you could conceivably ignore them all,” she said.

The knitters I spoke to were frustrated that Templer’s blog post seemed to be the thing that made that conversation blow up. “To say that it started with Karen Templer is to give her more credit than she deserves,” said Farrow, “but to say that white women noticed it when it happened to Karen Templer is more accurate. … That’s shitty, but if that’s what it takes to get the conversation started, I have trouble spending a lot of time feeling bad about it.”

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Yoo and Farrow have been two of the loudest voices in the conversation, as well as Sukrita Mahon (@su.krita) and Ocean Rose (@ocean_bythesea), among others. “We’ve had overwhelming support from all kinds of people,” said Mahon. “I really feel like we have a supportive audience that wants the community to do better and be better. It’s so encouraging. I’m daring to think that maybe we do belong.”

The conversation has certainly reached those outside the POC knitting community. “I saw [Templer’s] post mentioned in an Instagram story by one of the black knitters I follow, and I think they linked to @su.krita’s stories,” said Mark Popham, a 32-year-old white knitter in Brooklyn. “Then I started following a handful of BIPOC posting about it, and I’ve been following it since.”

And while he’d assumed that the knitting community was probably as racist as the world at large (read: very), he learned more about how he could combat that in this community. “I definitely had not done anything about what that would look like in this context — how it feels to be the only person of color in a knitting group, or see an Instagram feed with all white models, or have people say explicitly racist things to you at a knitting festival,” he said. “It shouldn’t take a person of color to point out that it’s weird to have an image of a diverse community be lily-white.”

The backlash to the conversation

The most common image of knitting is still probably an old white lady sitting in a rocking chair making a blanket (a stereotype that tends to grind modern knitters’ gears, with reason). But even though the stereotypical image has gotten younger over the years, the community is still perceived as very white. Part of that is a problem of access: Mahon points to the expense, especially if you’re buying high-quality or indie-made yarns (hand-dyed or luxurious yarn can be around $30 a skein, and depending on yardage, you’d need at least three to four skeins to make a sweater). “And it just keeps getting more and more expensive and elitist, until only other white women can keep up,” she said.

But another part is pure “marketable aesthetics,” says Yoo. “At some point, those super-blue filters came through, and then the minimalism came through, and then the not showing who you are, the cup of coffee, ball of yarn … spaces could become whitewashed without you really noticing.” The popular look was to focus on the knitting, not the person doing the knitting, which made it easier to forget what that person looked like. And sometimes, when followers were reminded, they showed their prejudice.

Rose said she noticed the whitewashing of the community when she’d post a photo of herself, or part of herself, after long stretches of only showing yarn or other images. “I just noticed the space was easier to navigate when I didn’t show who I was, because then you wouldn’t assume that I was a black person,” she said. “When I didn’t show myself, people would assume that the picture was from a white person. That’s when I knew it was really whitewashed.”

Though the conversation that Mahon, Rose, Yoo, and Farrow (among many others) have pushed forward has helped a lot of people see racism and whitewashing for what it is, there has also been pushback. The conversation has gotten some attention from the press, first in the New Yorker and later in Quillette, which called it a “witch-hunt” and involved a lot of hand-wringing over people being accused of being racist.

The backlash is “usually from white people who don’t understand why we’re ‘making it about race,’” says Mahon. “It’s generally people who either don’t think this is a problem or feel uncomfortable engaging with us. There are also POC who find this discussion uncomfortable, which I find harder to deal with. They just don’t want to rock the boat too much — but we already know where that gets us (nowhere).”

Hand-dyer and knitter Maria Tusken, who is white, posted a video on YouTube saying she spoke for the “silent majority” of knitters who didn’t think racism was a problem, that people were being “hostile ... all in the name of this social justice issue.” She added that those who did were following a “one-sided belief” that was leading them to bully people who didn’t think racism was a problem. (Tusken did not respond to request for comment for this piece.)

Her video was held up as an example of the fragility of many white knitters — even if they’re not leaving explicitly racist comments, many are refusing to engage with the conversation, and appear to agree with Tusken that the real “bullies” are those who point out white privilege to begin with.

So what happens now?

Though YouTube and blog posts have been part of the conversation, a vast majority of it has happened over the more ephemeral medium of Instagram stories. Mahon, Yoo, and others have made highlight collections of the conversation, but the format makes some things difficult.

“Sometimes you really feel the limits of the platform — not being able to link to websites, having to break statements into the comments,” said Popham, “but on the other hand, I don’t think this conversation could have happened elsewhere. There just isn’t another place where you could have this community, somewhat uncensored and able to react to one another.”

Those who facilitated the conversations agreed that the temporality of Instagram stories is what let them feel free to voice their concerns. “I think Instagram stories is a little less risky,” said Rose. Your main feed is “sort of like your landing page; people will go onto your feed and they see everything there. But with stories, you can kind of go wild.”

And according to Farrow, Instagram stories replicates the way these conversations have always worked. “The fact that it connected people makes it valid,” she said. “The fact that it’s temporary doesn’t make it less valid. Most conversations are temporary and exist in the moment and then expire, but that’s how we live.”

Stories have also allowed knitters of color to retain control over the conversation. Yoo says a number of white knitters have asked that these conversations take place in person. “I think it’s just like, ‘I prefer where you can see the amount of privilege that I can exhibit and extort,’” she said. But online, everyone is closer to being on equal footing; you can’t pressure someone into following the social norms of “polite conversation.”

Talking about it is always the first step, but as to how this conversation changes things going forward, it’s still unclear. Many people have pledged, whether on Instagram or in Reddit comments, to buy more knitwear and supplies from POC sellers, and say they’ve taken to heart the stories that have been shared. “Change is happening behind the scenes, and I find that encouraging, but also, when it’s not visible, how do you know?” asks Mahon.

One way these knitters are moving forward is with Unfinished Object, a blog from Mahon, Rose, Yoo, and Farrow that aims to explore “how diversity becomes inclusion, how representation morphs into change, and how we can serve our joy while being meaningfully present in our truths — in the fibre world and beyond.” So far, Mahon has written about feeling that her local knitting community in Sydney hasn’t taken enough of a stand against racism, and the group has an FAQ on how to be a better ally.

Perhaps the biggest change is how knitters of color will use a tool like Instagram from now on. “I cannot just mindlessly scroll anymore,” said Yoo. She and others are more aware than ever of whom they follow and support in the community. But Yoo also says the most promising aspect is that they’re not the center of the conversation anymore. “We’ve been exhausted, but seeing it sparked up again, seeing new voices, new coalitions sort of forming, that was like, ‘Oh, this is great.’”

Font: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/25/18234950/knitting-racism-instagram-stories