#you deserve time for yourself

[inkskinned]

i'm still trying to piece together the truth of it. when you left, you said: feel free to spin this narrative however you want. i have no idea if you were being cruel or if you just genuinely don't remember what you've done to me.

it's hard because i'd done so much of the work for you. i had seen the parts that flaked off, the rust underneath. i started separating you into two people - the one i loved, and the one who hurt me. i had this fantasy version of you - my partner - and then i had this stranger, a third person who would show up randomly to shatter me. i am deliriously glad i'm no longer with "the stranger". i miss the gentle (unreal?) "other" you terribly.

at first, i was so strict about my boundaries. i remember telling you to get the fuck out of my house if you were going to talk to me like that. by the end: i would justify your behavior for you, accepting even your mistreatment as "my fault" in the grand scheme. i look back on the person i was before you - smart, independent, confident - and i feel a strange sense of detachment. i don't even recognize me.

even in one of our last conversations, you said: if you want a partner that always talks warmly to you, find someone else. there was a time that a comment like that would have made me leave. and instead, somehow, i just placidly accepted that kind of thing. you were literally telling me that i wasn't allowed to have a reaction to your cruelty - and i just took it, because you'd so fully turned things around on me.

when people are faced with irrationality, a rational brain tries to make sense of it. this is the trap. they're lovely in the morning, gentle and blue-eyed and sweet. like nothing even happened, they breeze around the house and kiss you on the mouth. but at night; who is that? they snap almost randomly; flying into an impotent rage about just-about-anything. it just doesn't make sense. so the problem must be me, and my brain, and how i think.

the traumatized brain just wants peace. so maybe i'm misremembering. maybe you were just having a bad day. maybe it's actually me.

you eventually would fully turn on me and start implying that i am the bad actor in our relationship. that's what happens, right? that's literally in the playbook. you went to therapy for all of a month, told her a half-truth, co-opted therapyspeak. you figured out how to reframe your actions as "seeking peace." any time i stood my ground, i was "gaslighting." when i asked you to be more gentle, you said i was "tone policing." you said, randomly, i had emotionally manipulated you - i still have no idea what that's even specifically referring to. maybe my consistent requests for calmness and empathy?

and while i literally know better, and i'm sitting here, trained by you, thinking: wait, fuck. was i actually the person you made me out to be?

and the thing that scares me is that i literally do not know if you ever actually saw what you were doing to me. when you'd tell me how you remember arguments, you'd always summarize them in a way where you come off as gentle and easy: "i was trying to set an important boundary." what had actually happened was 15 minutes of you shouting at me i know you did something shady, just admit it already. eventually you'd say my reaction to your shouting (when i finally reacted, which usually happened around hour three) was inevitably "disappointing" and "another way i'm silencing your feelings."

how many times did i ask you - beg you - to just take accountability? looking back, i don't think i ever heard you say: you're right. the way i talked to you was wrong of me.

i am trying to tie together the two people into a full version of you in my head. yes, you made my coffee and made me laugh and spent hours on the phone with me. and yes - you would scream at me until i had to run away and hide behind something.

i wish i did have a narrative i could pull out and shape to my whim. i wish i did have some semblance of reality. instead i just stand here, strange and vibrating, wondering: what the fuck just happened?

[heybaetae]

maknae line + gestures of love 🫰🏼💋🫶🏼🌹🤟🏼 happy birthday @jkvjimin! ♡

[babymorte]

worst part about finding out somebody lied to you is having to sit there and wonder what else they lied about

[twinstxrs]

so much happened in this whole episode but i’m still on fig infiltrating ruben’s dream, making it look like the place where his friend was murdered, and then disguising herself as kipperlilly & repeatedly saying different variants of “somebody needs to take the fall for this, and it’s not going to be me. it’s going to be you.” while adaine as the elven oracle shows up next to her. can you imagine waking up from that, the idea of a horrible truth being pinned on you by your friend to save her own skin while the personification of fate and destiny stands there, almost as a promise that this is GOING to happen to you. we don’t even know if this kid is guilty. my god.

[minalover]

"I have recently started questioning my sexuality, but I am still too scared to embrace a label. For that reason, I started feeling as if I do not fit anywhere. As time went by, my doubts grew bigger, and I developed a terrible habit of invalidating myself: “Am I queer enough? I never dated a woman/non-binary person so I must be straight.” "You are entitled to space and time to discover yourself." (x)

@pscentral​ event 39: pride @911pride: queer/questioning/nature/discovery + eddie diaz (insp/tutorial/resource)

[atlantis-area]

#HappyTAEMINday 6v6 🥳🐥🌱

[stump-not-found]

how do u get the motivation to write? i have an idea that's been floating around for months but i've never been able to actually sit down and write it. even when i do manage to write i don't get much farther than like 2-10 paragraphs before i go " this is garbage i'll finish it later " and then never come back to it. you have several hundred thousands of words. how

this is an interesting question, one that's gonna have several different answers because it's very personal to each person . please treat this as a very incomplete datapoint because i could ramble about a bunch of different approaches

I'm gonna make an initial point that I'm in my thirties; I'm extremely used to tedium, and I find that's the number one blocker to folks. boredom is okay . you don't have to love everything you make . it's just important that you make anything at all

im also extremely opinionated. almost everything i write is because i engaged with some other art that pissed me off but i don't want to be a cunt about it . so i write 100k words of weird smut instead

more thoughts under the cut!

In terms of specific checks I'd ask folks struggling with art, i'll start with a couple of things:

are your physical needs being met?

If you find yourself struggling to write, check in with yourself and If you're tired, or hungry, or haven't gone for a walk, or haven't had fun/socialized in a while. You're a physical being and as irritating as that can be sometimes, you can't push past these things. Take care of your body!

Do you have community?

Inspiration for me is primarily driven out of a joy of talking and sharing ideas with others. Find and cultivate relationships with people purposefully; this is one of the hardest things for me, i had to go to therapy to even be able to even talk to people, but having people to share ideas with and collaborate with is the number one motivator in my life. its really, really worth it

Are your outcomes clear?

Not every story can or should be super long, or complex. Sometimes, I write something just for the sake of finishing something, specifically to train my brain in getting comfortable with starting and finishing something. Other times I write something to practice a specific technique. Other times? It's just to indulge, quality be damned -- sometimes you just got to go hog wild

Are you giving yourself permission to learn?

This is the most important to me. Making art isn't about being good at something; it's just something humans do. It's good for you. It's good to make shit that's bad, and to recognize that's part of the joy! Learning to be a novice is a genuine skill, and it feels terrible at first, but it gets easier to more you let yourself accept that you've got a lifetime to learn, and that's a wonderful thing

There's probably a lot more i could list off but your physical needs, community, clear outcomes, and learning mindset are the concepts that seem the most generally applicable.

for things more specific to me and my specific quirks as a human, i guess the only other thing I can mention is I write an abnormal amount of words per day, because I'm very comfortable with letting myself write shit words . like on average im pulling 2k words a day -- this is weird . doctors hate me . doctors also crave me .

this is probably because i'm an insane pervert . but also i practice not judging a thing that doesn't exist yet, and do a stream of consciousness approach when i write -- which is to say, I'll do some basic pre-planning of a scene, but a lot of times its just letting my thoughts flow freely without censorship . i'm already so visually minded because i've been writing comics & scripts for over a decade at this point, so it's pretty easy for me to picture dynamic scenes, and at that point i can just literally write out the actions im picturing

I do not edit, I do not pause, I just let the words in my head flow and have faith that it will be good . i'm an extremely indulgent writer and encourage everyone else to be as well . i'm dog shit at grammar and make a lot of mistakes . i thankfully have wonderful friends who help me learn and grow in the areas i am weak in

when you just let yourself write what the fuck ever, sometimes you get some really dope shit out of it. Other times you write 4k words of dogshit that you gotta delete. Either way, I have fun, I learn something about my story, and I get a little bit better at trusting myself to make something i enjoy reading

be selfish in art . but also be empathetic, and curious ! write shit you hate . write shit you love . write shit that only you and one other freak are gonna enjoy . just be weird about it i guess is the main thing .

OH!!! OH ONE FINAL THING SORRY: listen to music and hallucinate and pace in circles and spend hours just rotating images in your head to music . literally my number one thing for coming up for shit that rocks . go listen to some hatsune miku right the fuck now . i know not everyone can visualize things but pacing around listening to music is such a big part of the writing process for me please go kneel before hatsune miku and kiss her on the ring

[osarina]

goood morning from carina and the cruisezais! another day at sea today, but tomorrow we will be reaching the island YAYYY

[wishchip106]

thinking for the millionth time about how a cherik edit saved the world

(the single gay tear and everything ☝️)

it’s so silly like instead of thinking about all the bittersweet and tender moments he might’ve had over the last ten years with his wife and daughter Erik makes a whole edit in his head about CHARLES HIS EX HUSBAND!!

what are you trying to me here Erik? that all you really care about is the safety and wellbeing of the man who you abandoned on that beach in cuba 20 years ago? that the only person who could guide you back to light is Charles Francis fucking Xavier??

who he hasn’t even gotten in contact with (that we know of) FOR TEN YEARS!!!

okay man you do you totally not like your wife and kid didn’t die like a few days ago lmao

why are gay people like this 🧍‍♂️

[usoppinggg]

STOP DRAWING USOPP WITH PALE SKIN!!!!!

STOP DRAWING USOPP WITH WAVY HAIR!!!!!

AND FOR GOD’S SAKE STOP WITH THE MINSTREL LIPS!!!!!

[faunandfloraas]

This popular 2min girl getting like gang harassed on the monthly for years by minsungers and they always go "shes blocked a bunch of minsung or han accounts!! That PROVES she hates han" meanwhile they just ignore the uhhhh gang harassment by that segment of fandom that's been ongoing toward her for ages? Like no... I don't think she has any problem with Han... She just so happens to block people that call her disgusting and tell her to kill herself, say mean shit about her etc... you know... As any normal person would...

[ifieabouteverything]

“I don’t deserve kippers, Cathilda.”

“My sweet boy, Master Fabian, its not about deserving kippers, its not a test or a trial. I made them for you cause’ I love you.”

[iliothermia]

taking a break from intricate book cover im working on to line Neptune.. He has a nice belly so wanted to share it before I sleep

[isatartdump]

I was going to finish this but I... Honestly don't even know how I'd go about it. It looks good already- finished, even.

Early sketches of it

Initial idea was Siffrin breaking up the sky to get Loop but I didn't like it much lmao There's just a really specific comfort that having Siffrin silently reach to Loop in search of keeping their guiding star close gives, if you get what I mean

[thepeacefulgarden]

[sapphic-agent]

Kataang Shippers: Netflix Katara sucks! Where's her fire??

Me: Yeah, I would have preferred they kept her temper and spirit too. But to be fair the comics and LOK also-

Kataang Shippers: Katara deserved a quiet life after the war! She deserves better than feminists shitting on her for doing absolutely nothing after the war while her friends and husband and brother were fostering a new era! Just because fighting was one of her defining character traits and an integral part of her character arc doesn't mean it's bad writing that she gave it up! It makes TOTAL sense that she didn't do anything to earn a statue while even the cabbage man did!

Me: eye twitch