cartoonsareeverything

[cartoonsareeverything]

Episode 2 board is coming along

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Like a new friend!

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look I've harped on this before but I think it's worth doing again. if you put "cis men dni" you are forcing trans men to out themselves to interact with you and that's shitty. you're also making eggs and closeted transfems feel worse about themselves and making the distance between womanhood/femininity and themselves feel that much wider and unassailable. (source: me) you're ALSO making recently out/early stages of transition/just very insecure trans women feel like shit, and probably desperately consider what the difference is between themselves and men, and they likely won't interact with you either. (source: me again) also yk what I get it kind of if ur making sapphic posts or whatever but sometimes it just isn't necessary. sometimes it genuinely is just shitty to cis men too and it promotes a weird ass culture of bioessentialism. just. you're showing a message. and it's maybe not the one you think you are, or the one you want.

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love when a bunch of new people join a 20+ year old fandom and are like "erm nobodys talking about [issue thats been beaten to death every 6 months for the last two decades]" yeah yeah the issue we all know the issue. think of something new and innovative to say.

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Hey! Check out these backgrounds!

I'm opening up background art commissions to help pay for my kidney surgeries (both past and upcoming).

Currently, I owe around 5k (haha im in danger), and I anticipate that number going up in the coming months.

If you are interested in a commission or in making a donation, check out my ko-fi:

if youve ever watched my video essays or read my fic and thought "hey i want to support this person" sharing news of this would be a great way. Thanks.

[cartoonsareeverything]

Anneliese and Erica

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a quick doodle of some Ford & Mabel bonding because the brain demanded it

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Hair to dye for

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Rarijack they could never make me hate you

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some people seem to think aotearoa new zealand is just fields and hills and grass. maybe some mountains. maybe a fjord or two. which is so fascinating to me because we have so many different biomes and landscapes it's bonkers.

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you really do have to kill that judgmental waspy conformity obsessed voice in your head & truly embrace the idea that provided you’re not bothering anyone, you can do whatever you want

today i took my 50 pack of crayola markers, a coloring book, and my laptop to a coffee shop. i bought a drink, i settled in at a small table, i hooked up my headphones, and i colored while watching anime for about an hour & a half

grown ass adult sitting alone at the coffee shop quietly coloring & watching anime — unconventional? perhaps a bit. bothersome to anyone else? not in the slightest

there is no invisible audience scrutinizing your every move!!! literally no one gives a shit!! there are no rules!!!! do whatever you want forever!!!!

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your life is not an optimization problem

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Gripping people by the shoulders to earnestly tell them how parts of Ireland could be similar to the North American Pacific Northwest with stunning temperate rain forests if we actually committed to re-wilding are you listening to me? The constant rain we have supports beautiful rainforest ecosystems that were destroyed but we can bring them back. It wouldn't even be that hard. The forests will regenerate themselves over time if we just stop planting non-native pine plantations, remove livestock grazing from the land, and control the deer population. We could turn one of the most ecologically degraded countries in the world into one of the most unique ecosystems found on earth. Do you hear me???? Only a handful of other places on the planet support temperate rainforest biomes and we are continuing to destroy our own. Why are you trying to get away???

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Chris Smalls is finally released.

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As much as I appreciate the people defending Ford in the wake of TBOB's release, and discussing the importance of avoiding victim-blaming and being aware of a person's environment, there's something specific that rubs me the wrong way about some of the things I've read.

The thing about abuse is that takes agency away from its victims. This is actually something that broadly applies to different forms of trauma, as I've just been going over in one of my classes on Adolescent Development. My professor for that class specializes in trauma-informing and training, so she has an entire unit on trauma as part of the syllabus, and one of the things she emphasized was that giving people agency and control over their own choices is critical to helping them recover from a traumatic event.

When it comes to Bill's possession of Ford, the lack of control is even more literal. Ford literally has his body puppeted by a demon, and his mind altered as well. Others have taken agency from him to a lesser extent—Stan limiting his choices in education, Fiddleford potentially using the memory gun on him, as another analysis post I can't find did a really good job of breaking down—but it's not as all-encompassing as Bill's abuse, and Stan and Fidds both make better choices later in the series. Bill refuses to.

But I'm getting off topic. My point is, Ford's loss of agency is one of the most crucial pieces of his character arc. It's why he lashes out so strongly when he returns home, against his will, to find that his identity has been stolen. It probably factors into his need to be the "hero", to be the one to defeat Bill. And even though he ultimately isn't that "hero", and he does let the Mystery Shack continue to operate, he does ultimately get more of a choice in the matter. He chooses to go along with the plan. He chooses to go with Stan on their long-overdue adventure.

But there's something else he does too. He apologizes.

Why is that so important? Because in regaining his sense of agency, he also undertakes the accountability that goes with it. He isn't solely to blame for everything that happened to him, or even necessarily every choice he made, but he did make bad choices.

And that's the thing that bothers me about some Ford analyses and defenses. Some people go too far and say that Ford isn't to blame for anything that he's done. Not only is that untrue, but it is once again stripping him of his agency. He is an adult capable of making his own decisions, and ergo capable of making bad decisions. And we need to accept that, without infantilizing him or blaming everyone else around him.

One of the things that compels me so much about Gravity Falls is that is generally does strike this balance pretty well, of personal agency vs. external circumstances. (There's also an excellent analysis post out there somewhere about Dipper and Mabel's agency, how the show doesn't force them to fix the problems of their predecessors or burden them exclusively with saving the world, but does still let them have agency and power in the fight and in Stan's recovery.) There are so, so many things that happen to the main cast that are mostly outside of their control, and also bad decisions that a lot of them have made that cannot be excused, at least not fully, by their circumstances.

And the beautiful thing about that agency is that these characters are also able to use it to become better people, to regain control over their lives, to take back power after it was taken from them. But you have to let them, and that includes letting them be people who messed up, owned up, and worked to make it better.

In fact, I think the reason that Ford is so quick to own up to his mistakes when it comes to Bill is because that's one of the ways he's taking back his power. He's incredibly stubborn when it comes to holding other grudges, but with Bill, he readily admits to Stan and Dipper separately that he's made some "terrible mistakes", to use his words. And he isn't to blame for falling for Bill's manipulation—Bill was the one actively manipulating—but no, he should not have summoned him to begin with. That doesn't make him deserving of anything Bill did to him, but by admitting to the mistakes he did make and working on a way to defeat Bill, it's letting him take back some amount of control in the whole situation. He can't make Bill change his ways, but he can own up to and correct the things he did wrong.

He does overcorrect a bit; I do think he blames himself too much for "falling for Bill's flattery." But generally, I like how he also doesn't try to blame Bill for every single thing that went wrong with the whole portal deal, like he (initially) did with some other situations, especially everything with Stan.

Anway. Let Ford make mistakes. Let him be wrong sometimes. Let him have his agency.

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characters going “we were lovers once”: eh, it’s okay i guess. it’s nice enough

characters going “we were friends once”: absolutely devastating. one hit knockout i’m gone