#I HOPE that's what happened

[mozart-the-meerkitten]

Current “fun” thing:

So apparently I am extremely allergic to one (1) antibiotic. I did not know this. I had a sinus infection and guess what antibiotic I was prescribed? That’s right, the one I’m allergic to.

Evidently I’ve had this antibiotic once before when I was six and my body wisely ejected it from my system then and my mom made sure I never got it again. I got it this time and it didn’t seem to have any adverse effects and we assumed I’d just grown out of my issues with it.

NOPE.

I went to urgent care this morning because I woke up with a blotchy red itchy rash on my hands, arms, legs and feet. Got some steroids and was told it’d clear up eventually but it would take a while because this antibiotic “stays in your body a long time”.

What they didn’t tell me is that the rash freaking MOVES AROUND. Its faded off my arms/hands/legs mostly but now it’s on my sides, armpits and there’s little dots of it on my face and it’s on my ear?! I am so incredibly disturbed. I’ve been allergic to things my entire life and never had anything like this happen to me (except the bizarre yearly rash I get in the spring/summer that causes raised dots on my skin and itches and, yeah, feels a lot like this, but even the allergists don’t know what that is so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). I have taken normal allergy meds and benadryl along with the steroids so I’m doing pretty much everything I can. My doctor knows but he wasn’t in the office today (of course).

Anyway, have some pictures of the weird crap my body’s doing right now:

don’t ever take medication you’re allergic to kids, and if you ever have this happen go get it checked out immediately.

[hansoeii]

look at you, you're gorgeous!

[christadeguchi]

(✿◕‿◕) die (ꈍ ꒳ ꈍ✿)

[hinamie]

to moving forward

[inkskinned]

the thing about some men is that they want you to remember, at all times, that you are underneath them. that with one word or look or "joke", you will stay beneath them. that even "exceptions" to the rule are not true exceptions - the commonly cited statistic that one in eight men believe they could win against serena williams.

women's gymnastics is often not seen as real gymnastics. whatever the fuck non-euclidian horrors rhythmic gymnasts are capable of, it's often tamped down as being not a sport. some of the most dominant athletes in the world are women. nobody watches women's soccer. despite years of dancing and being built like a fucking brick, men always assume they're faster and stronger than i am. you wouldn't like what happens when they are incorrect. once while drunk at a guy's house i won a held-plank challenge by a solid minute. the party was over after that - he became exceedingly violent.

what i mean is that you can be perfect, and they still think you're ... lacking, somehow. i hope you understand i'm trying to express a neutral statement when i say: taylor swift was the possibly the most patriarchy-palatable, straight-down-the-line woman we could churn out. she is white, conventionally attractive, usually pretty mild in personality. say what you will about her (and you should, she's a billionaire, she can handle it), but a few things seem to be true about her: 1. she can write a damn catchy song, and 2. the eras tour truly was a massive commercial success and was also genuinely an impressive feat of human athleticism and performance.

i don't know if she deserves the title of "woman of the year," i'm not debating that in this post. what i am saying is that she was named Woman of The Year, and then an untalented man got onstage at the golden globes and made fun of her for attending her boyfriend's football games. what i am saying is that this woman altered local economies - and her dating life is still being made into a "harmless" punchline. the camera panned, greedy, over to her downing a full glass of champagne. congratulations taylor! you are woman of the year! but you are a woman. even her.

fuck, man. write better material.

a guy gets onstage at a college graduation and despite the fact like half the crowd is made up of women, he spends a significant proportion of it warning these people - who spent possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars on their education - that they were lied to. that the "real" meaning of femininity is motherhood. that they shouldn't rest on the laurels of that education-they-paid-for but instead throw it away to kneel at a man's heel. imagine that. sweating in your godawful polyester gown (that you also had to pay for!), fresh out of 4 years of pushing yourself ever-harder: and some guy you've never met - who knows nothing about you - he reminds you this "win" is a pyrrhic one at best. you really shouldn't consider yourself that extraordinary. you're still a woman, even after years of study.

god forbid you are not a pretty woman, but if you are pretty, you must be dumb. god forbid you are not ablebodied or white or cis or straight or good at swallowing. you must be beneath a man, or else they are not a man. the equation for masculinity seems to just be: that which is not a woman or womanly (god forbid). anything "feminine" is thereby anathema. to engage in "feminine" things such as therapy, getting a hug from a friend, or crying - it is giving up ones manhood. therefore women need to be put in their place to ensure that masculinity is protected.

this is something i have struggled to explain to terfs - they are not doing the work of feminism, but rather the patriarchy. by asserting that women and men must be (on some secret level) oppositional and in conflict, they also assume that being a woman is akin to being another species. but bigotry does not stem from observational truths or clarity - that is what makes it bigotry. there was nothing in my childhood that made me fundamentally different from my brother. we are treated differently nonetheless. to assert there is some biological drive that enforces my gender role is to assert that women have a gendered role. men do not see women as equal to them not because of biological reality - but instead because the core tenant of the patriarchy is that women aren't full, realized people.

we are told from a very young age to excuse misbehavior as a single man's choice - not all men. it is not all men, just that one guy. all women are gold-digging bitches who belong in the kitchen - but if a man is mean, bigoted, or violent to you, it's just that particular guy, and that means nothing about men-as-a-whole. it is only one guy who got mad when you gently rejected him. it is only one guy who warns her this trophy is heavy, are you sure you can hold it? it is only one guy who smashes her face into the cake. it is only one guy talking into a mic about hating our bodily autonomy.

i have just found that they often wait until the moment we actually seem to be upstaging them. you sit in a meeting where you're presenting your own findings and he says get me a coffee? or you run to the end of the marathon and are about to finish first and he pushes your kids out in front of you. you win the chess game and they make some comment akin to well, you're ugly away. we can be the billionaire and get the dream life and finally fucking do it and yet! still! they have this strange, visceral urge to say well actually, if you think you're so great -

it's not one just one guy. it's one in eight.

[chloesimaginationthings]

"Oswald's mom has got it going on" - FNAF Pit bonnie

[feralnumberfive]

[glassrooibos]

Everything stays right where you left it huh guys

[pangur-and-grim]

Belphie got to join me on an important business call today

[zosanbrainrot]

PART 4!!

01 02 03 04 05 06

I stg I'm kicking yall in the shins one last time, we're ALMOST done with the angst!

Let me tell you I had this finished(!) twice(!), but no, I had to go back and change it lmao

In my first go the fight scene was much more rough, it was hard for me to draw from the beginning, I'm not really good at this sort of thing. So I took a little break from the comic and when I got back to drawing the last two panels (static ch close ups) they turned out so GOOD and CRISP! I just had to go back and redraw the previous ones. Didn't change the composition back then, just made the drawings less sketchy and fixed minor mistakes. This panel in particular went through bigger fixes, I couldn't get the pose right:

I emphasized the arch in Zoro's back so it's more clear he's hunched over, the head is lower, and the hand on his stomach wasn't looking good, so I switched its direction and I feel it looks more natural now. The whole pose is shifted to the side now, whereas in the previous ones it was more straight up, but I wasn't conveying perspective well.

So after that I had it all exported, loaded into drafts and as I scroll it on my phone I'm like... There should be one more panel where Zoro's getting kicked : | Imma need to change it AGAIN.......

It just didn't flow well. I work on the comic in chunks so I haven't put these panels together before, I always saw them side by side in my main file.

I just didn't like how you go from Zoro getting kicked to him being thrown, it just felt disjointed to me.

So first I looked through the three sole volumes of BNHA that I have at home to maybe understand drawing fight scenes just a little bit better. That's how I got to the new version of Zoro getting kicked so there's more lines showing movement etc. but most importantly you have the kick and Zoro's reaction separate. So now Zoro's face has a bigger closeup, you can see his open eye.

In the previous version it was more distant, the closeup wasn't as big and you couldn't see his expression well. With just the side view you could only see he's in pain but nothing more than that,whereas when you have a full view of his face you can get much more from that. You see where he's looking, you know he's looking at Sanji when he kicks him in the guts.

I guess that's why, in the first version, I was trying to still show his face where he's being thrown off of Sanji bcs I felt the side profile wasn't doing it's job, but at the same time it felt off, like there was less force in the kick bcs his head wasn't following the movement idk. Also he was def too big in the frame. So now Zoro's smaller to emphasize the perspective more, the head is down, the right arm is more to the side and there's more lines, the flame is more aggressive now and bursts into the sides when it comes in contact with Zoro's body to show the impact. I know they could be better still, but this is the best I can do right now and I'm happy with the result!! I'm glad I kept pushing it! These poses were VERY confusing to draw lol

Alsooo, it would make more sense if Sanji threw Zoro in the other direction, over his head like in karate/judo, but I wanted to keep my directions consistent. I had to have Sanji standing back to the carriage, so he doesn't notice the spear being thrown and Zoro facing the carriage so he can get hit from the front, right after he gets up. It's like..... did he not see it? Did he get hit on purpose? You decide lmao

Though I'm probably too rigid with my 'camera', in BNHA you see the action from any and every direction, i guess it adds to the dynamism of it all, also there's just many MANY more panels in manga lmao

Judge giving me major "isn't there somebody you forgot to ask" vibes at the end there lmao I hope you forgot he's even there and this comes as a surprise!

[kcrabb88]

It's truly wild to me how many people out there don't understand that the Star Wars prequels are a tragedy or how tragedies work.

Posts like "these are the Jedi failed movies" truly just make me shake my head. They're actually the "fascism wears a smile until it strikes you down and then it's too late" movies. They're the "the senate became corrupt and clapped in the face of genocide" movies. They're the "make people scared enough of war until they accept authoritarianism" movies. They're the "fear and possessiveness will tear you up on the inside" movies. The Jedi were the heroes of lore, people loved and looked up to them, looked to them for safety, and then too much got put on their shoulders on purpose by Palpatine, and also by a senate that didn't want to act (not you Padme and Bail and Mon, you're perfect). They were drafted and used and scapegoated, which is, you know, a tenet of the vast majority of authoritarian governments (Hitler and Stalin, for instance, might be on different ends of the political spectrum, but they sure both did scapegoat specific groups and commit mass murder, just differently).

When some people say "these movies are about the fall of the Jedi" what they mean is "the Jedi failed" but that's not what "the fall of the Jedi means." It means they were wiped the fuck OUT. Like, Jesus, in Rogue One Tarkin is talking about burning out the final MEMORY of the Jedi by blowing up the holy city in Jedha. Palpatine had to get rid of the Jedi because to get rid of the Jedi was to get rid of the final people standing in his way after he had already worn them out. His intention was not only to kill them, but to alter the galaxy's entire perception of them. To rip away hope. People are always looking for the Jedi to be Bad or nitpick their mistakes (because while other people are allowed to make mistakes, the Jedi never are). Palpatine made himself look like a benevolent grandpa who would keep everyone safe. And that, more than anything, is what gave him SO much power. He stole the narrative.

It's just like. Of course WE know what was going to happen! We know from watching the OT that the PT can only end in tragedy. But the characters don't know that! They don't have all the info! That's how a tragic story structure works. We see it coming and they can't.

Anyway. The Jedi are laser-sword wielding monks with psychic powers who just wanted to do what they could to help. The world would be better if more folks remembered that.

[giantkillerjack]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

[egophiliac]

YOU MANIFESTED THE TWEEL CARDS CONGRATS

YOU'RE WELCOME EVERYBODY!

seriously though I was probably like. 60-80% thinking we'd get at least one tweel for chapter 10. but I was NOT expecting it so soon! both of 'em! in August! a shame we're not getting a Coral Sea event after all...but I guess I can be resigned to that and ALSO excited for getting shiny sparkly glowing(!!!!) mertwins along with Azul fighting his inner demons and going right for the eyes! AHHHH I CAN'T WAIT

(also heeeey I recognize that rowboat... 👀)

[bunnieswithknives]

You made a little mess there bud

[gummybugg]

Oh I gave a great idea! *breaks character's psyche into a million unsalvageable pieces with a baseball bat*