#discuss with others

[imagoddamnonionmason]

Be kind to yourself creatively

This post is mainly about original characters

So I wrote this sentiment in a collection of tags on a different post, but I wanted to actually write it all down in my own post.

This is the post that triggered my ramble.

On that post I put in my tags something along the lines of sharing your ocs with others helps you grow them because someone might highlight something you hadn't thought about before, which then leads to character growth. I think it then also spiralled me into saying something about making comparisons, and that when I was younger I would often find myself comparing whatever original works/characters/art I had created to other people's and that it stunted my confidence and therefore my creativity.

I suppose the reason I'm rambling about this is because I have been creating original characters for, gosh, years now and I have had a lot of time to make mistakes and I hope that I can offer advice to people who might be starting out or are just feeling a little low about their work!

So, here goes, with the full capacity of my lungs:

BE KIND TO YOURSELF CREATIVELY.

Or you'll catch a rogue Goose coming for your knees-

Seriously, be kind, because everyone has to start out somewhere and I will put money on it that no one starts out with a perfectly developed original character or works.

You're allowed to take baby steps.

You're allowed to be rough around the edges.

Never compare whatever you create to anyone else because we are all walking a different path. You may compare your newly born original character to one that has been worked on for years and therefore the comparison is unfair!

Even then, even if you compared two equally fleshed out characters to each other, the comparisons would still be unfair; you know why? Because they are individuals. No one character is the same and creativity is SUBJECTIVE.

So please, whether you've been making original characters for a long time or have only just started, remember this:

Be kind to yourself

Walk your creative path at your own pace <3

Goose

[rivetgoth]

It's honestly crazy that discussion around testosterone HRT skews so much towards the beginning stages of it (to the point that you have dozens of guys thinking their transition is "failed" if they don't pass by like a year in lol) and what the initial changes of the first couple of months to years look like, like the classic laundry list of those early basic changes like bottom growth, voice drop, etc, when IMO literally none of that compares remotely to the depth and intensity of the long term total masculinization you start to experience like 3-5+ years in.

[apollos-boyfriend]

we have GOT to kill tiktok/twitter self-censorship i just witnessed a grown adult say the word “smex” out loud to our professor

[samble-moved]

post itself

false flags

trans/adjacent tags

accessibility features

tumblr live post (thanks for the link, @problemnyatic)

flashing / strobing / lights

unblockable flashing ad

buying ad free

staff @/macmanx guilt trip

list of staff + more issues

[descendant-of-truth]

Shipping is fun and all but I swear every single time someone makes a comment, whether as a joke or in a legitimate analysis, about there being "no other explanation" for a pair's interactions, I lose just a bit more of my sanity

Like, no, you guys don't get it. Romance is not about the Amount of devotion, it's about the COLOR. the FLAVOR of it all. a character can be just as devoted to their platonic friend as they are to their romantic partner, and they don't love either of them more, just differently.

But because the majority of people still have it stuck in their minds that romance exists on the highest tier of love, I'm stuck seeing endless takes that boil down to "these two care about each other too much for it to NOT be romantic" as if that's the core determining factor to how literally any of this works

In conclusion: stop telling me that I don't understand the story if I don't interpret the leads as romantic, I am TIRED

[patrickztump]

please pass this around to all of your classmates, i don’t want anyone saying they didn’t get to vote

[just-your-average-tangerine]

The line between binary and nonbinary trans people is nowhere near as clean as some of yall think it is

[roydeezed]

One thing for those who have watched The Boy and The Heron or will watch it. The Japanese title for it is How Do You Live? And Miyazaki stated he was leaving it for his grandson, saying, "Grandpa is moving onto the next world soon but he is leaving behind this film".

The deaths of contemporaries and friends such as Satoshi Kon and Isao Takahata and also the expected successor of Yoshifumi Kondo were things that have always weighed heavily on the back of Miyazaki's mind.

He recognizes the industry and the occupation for how soul crushing it was, grinding up either the spirit or the physical body of those who work in it. He loves and hates the industry he stands on the peak of and fully recognizes how it will probably be the death of him. And he knows it'll leave him unable to say a lot of things to his Grandson.

So How Do You Live? is a lesson. For his grandson. For himself. For his two sons. And probably for anyone else willing to pay attention.

Hayao Miyazaki is a flawed man that makes things so important to so many people. And I think more than any other film of his, in this you get to pull back the curtain a bit and see him at work. And what should be this giant unblemished titan can be seen for what he is, a sad old man who had higher hopes for himself and has even higher hopes for the people he makes his work for.

It's a beautiful thing to see another's humanity in their work. To look past the artifice and glam of commercialized art and find humans behind it. And humans willing to show their humanity and mortality is even rarer. And something to be celebrated. So when you watch it. Or if you've watched it already. Understand that this film is Miyazaki kneeling down, weary after years of weaving dreams and making mistakes, reaching out and saying to you that he hopes you can do better. It's an old man who's made all the mistakes of the world passing it on to you, hoping you do better, and making sure you know it's okay if you don't.

How do you Live? By making mistakes. By messing up. But still moving forward. And still reaching out.

[inkskinned]

so one of the things that's so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn't that bad for me, and you'll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that's super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.

first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.

it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.

and the thing is that you're a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.

you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you've ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.

and what's wild is that because sometimes it isn't a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you've been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they'd numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn't actually notice, because you'd thought it was a sprain.

your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn't always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it's more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there's no true way to predict how "much" something actually hurts.

in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn't mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.

in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.

so it's either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it's true that it's far more likely you will experience pain, rather than "just a pinch." and yet - there's nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it's elective, isn't it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.

you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.

once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you've been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.

and it's fucked up because the conversation is never just "hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds" - it's usually something around the lines of "well, it didn't kill you, did it?"

you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have "some" serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?

hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!

you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you're told - i didn't even want you to have this in the first place. we're told be careful what you wish for. we're told that it's our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don't like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.

we have been saying for so long - "i'm not asking you to remove the option, i'm asking you to reconsider the risk." this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn't it?

[skunkes]

new annoying little back and forth: third time this week

[filmnoirsbian]

U get used to the straight men actors in gay roles kissing so hard n hungry their noses are in danger so ur like yeah that's just how straight men kiss other men I guess and then u see straight actors in gay roles kissing like grandparents at church who stopped loving each other years ago and no longer know how to feel passion and ur like ok what gives. How did u get that role. Do u know how many straight actors would kill to be gay for pay on that camera? I'm calling Gael García Bernal.

[isaacz]

buncha of doodles of them

[rubysevens]

anyway in the past week the irish government has voted down two motions which would have condemned the genocide in gaza.

i need everyone to stop lionising ireland as if its not also a european government with strong ties to the us. american weapons pass through shannon airport and will continue to, because yesterday the motion to stop that was voted down 83 to 50.

other governments have done much more but somehow people still act as though ireland is the ultimate palestinian ally and exempt from criticism on its handling of palestine bc it was once colonised, even though that past experience clearly isnt being taken into account by the irish government when creating policy.

i live here i know there’s a lot of public support and sympathy for palestine, which is great, but that isnt reflected in government, and i think ireland should be treated like other countries whose governments have done nothing.

[transmechanicus]

I know some people have unfathomable beef with the term but i really don’t see the issue with transmascs describing their specific experiences with societal mistreatment and persecution as “transandrophobia”, like i think it’s good to be able to discuss specific experiences and articulate the problems you’re facing actually.

[multigenderswag]

I'd like to talk for a bit about the genre of post that's like "sure you're a boygirl fagdyke genderfreak but do you respect [trans identity]?" I think these sorts of posts do address a lot of important points, such as:

Even if you're genderqueer and going "gender isn't real! smash the binary!" there's a real possibility you haven't unlearned or might still be upholding some very transphobic sentiments, and you should do some introspection about that

Some people only want acceptance for their trans identity but don't want to do the work to deconstruct what gender looks like, stop holding other people to their own gendered expectations, and unlearn their internalized bigotry about different trans identities

Sometimes the [trans identity] is specifically relevant to the identities referenced, such as people who will do surface level acceptance of "boygirls" but then call multigender people problematic for using "contradictory" terms like male lesbian, or asking "are you normal about intersex people?" to point out the prevalent intersexism in the multigender community.

But if the [trans identity] or intersex identity being asked about isn't related to multigender community issues, it seems a little strange to consistently single out labels like boygirl and fagdyke that tend to be used by multigender people in these posts. All kinds of trans people can be transphobic about other trans identities. All kinds of trans people are capable of fighting for their own acceptance but not anyone else's. But these posts are pretty frequently just about boygirl fagdykes.

It reminds me of posts about a "theyfab named Sock being transmisogynistic." Are there transmisogynistic FTX nonbinary people? Yes, no one is immune from perpetuating transmisogyny. But these types of posts are still exorsexist.

Similarly, though I'm not saying the pattern of "sure you're a boygirl fagdyke genderfreak but do you respect [trans identity]" is necessarily exorsexist or transmultiphobic, since like I said they do address important points, some of which actually are multigender community issues. But people do use those types of posts to be really transmultiphobic and exorsexist, but in an "acceptable" way, because the boygirls are transphobic so it's okay to hate them.

Some examples in the notes of this sort of post asking 'are you normal about trans women?":

This assumes that multigender identities are only an online thing, only a young person thing, that all multigender people look cis in real life, that no multigender person has experienced real transphobia.

Again, this assumes that no multigender person "looks like a freak" for their gender, that they never struggle with transphobia offline. And straight up saying they have a "huge issue" with girlboy genders.

Multigender labels aren't "performative titles," they're our genders. This person is just straight up admitting they think our genders are fake, that they're only "titles" and not real fucking identities.

"I tend to Not like multigender people" okay so we're just saying the quiet part out loud now

By all means, keep talking about intracommunity transphobia. It's important. But don't throw multigender people under the bus to do so.

[voidpumpkin]

seeing analyses of nimona is fun because they have really good insights and are analysing every inch of this movie but in virtually all of them there is a gaping hole where the very obvious messages and metaphors in regards to race and racism in this film lay.

Like tell me, do you believe the story of a brown man, brought in by a black woman in an attempt to fix the systemic issues in a system where ancestry is valued over merit, is framed for the murder of said black woman by a white woman who is fueled by paranoia that a black woman’s efforts might upend the system, the supposed threat this brown man and of dangers that don’t exist and a desparation to fulfill the legacy of a white woman who is a literal metaphor for the way bigotry is taught (in particular homophobia/transphobia). And thus the brown man is villanised for something he didn't do and is forced to find support and companionship in another victim of the system, with this story ending with the white woman willing to destroy everything than let the brown gay man and a trans girl change the system/her mind, has absolutely no racial implications or messages surrounding race.