they want to talk about mental illness and acceptance and how everyone is a little ocd it's cute and quirky and their "intrusive thoughts" are about cutting their hair off and you say yours are about taking a razorblade to your eye and they say ew can you not and everyone is a little adhd sometimes! except if you're late it's a personality flaw and it's because you are careless and cruel (and someone else with adhd mentions they can be on time, so why can't you?) and it's not an eating disorder if it's girl dinner! it's not mania if it's girl math! what do you mean you blew all of your savings on nonrefundable plane tickets for a plane you didn't even end up taking. what do you mean that you are afraid of eating. get over it. they roll their little lips up into a sneer. can you not, like, trauma dump?
they love it on them they like to wear pieces of your suffering like jewels so that it hangs off their tongue in rapiers. they are allowed to arm-chair diagnose and cherrypick their poisons but you can't ever miss too many showers because that's, like, "fuckken gross?" so anyone mean is a narcissist. so anyone with visual tics is clearly faking it and is so cringe. but they get to scream and hit customer service employees because well, i got overwhelmed.
you keep seeing these posts about how people pleasers are "inherently manipulative" and how it's totally unfair behavior. but you are a people pleaser, you have an ingrained fawn response. in the comments, you have typed and deleted the words just because it is technically true does not make it an empathetic or kind reading of the reaction about one million times. it is technically accurate, after all. you think of catholic guilt, how sometimes you feel bad when doing a good deed because the sense of pride you get from acting kind - that pride is a sin. the word "manipulation" is not without bias or stigma attached to it. many people with the fawn response are direct victims of someone who was malignantly manipulative. calling the victims manipulative too is an unfair and unkind reading of the situation. it would be better and more empathetic to say it is safety-seeking or connection-seeking behavior. yes, it can be toxic. no, in general it is not intended to be toxic. there is no reason to make mentally ill people feel worse for what we undergo.
you type why is everyone so quick to turn on someone showing clear signs of trauma but you already know the fucking answer, so what's the point of bothering. you kind of hate those this is what anxiety looks like! infographics because at this point you're so good at white-knuckling through a severe panic attack that people just think you're stoic. even people who know the situation sometimes comment you just don't seem depressed. and you're not a 9 year old white kid so there's no way you're on the spectrum, you're not obsessed with trains and you were never a good mathematician. okay then.
mental illness is trending. in 2012 tumblr said don't romanticize our symptoms but to be fair tiktok didn't exist yet. there's these series of videos where someone pretends to be "the most boring person on earth" and is just being a normal fucking person, which makes your skin crawl, because that probably means you are boring. your friend reads aloud a profile from tinder - no depressed bitches i fucking hate that mental illness crap. your father says that medication never actually works.
you still haven't told your grandmother that you're in therapy. despite everything (and the fact it's helping): you just don't want her to see you differently.
6K notes
·
View notes
Friday was my last day at Valve.
Leaving a job full of people and projects you love is always hard, but I have a pretty good reason for it this time around:
Next Monday is my first day at Cyan.
Feels appropriate to announce this on Riven's anniversary, the game that is entirely to blame for who I am as a concept artist and Art Director. WHO WOULD I EVEN BE if I hadn't had my 11yo mind blown by the little wahrk gallows counting toy in the Rivenese schoolhouse??? It's a mystery.
I can’t talk about what's on the horizon just yet—short of helping to get Riven out the door—but I’m thrilled to finally be a part of this studio, officially, after thirty years of wistful pining. If my ancient Riven fanart is anything to go by, it's been a long time comin.'😎
2K notes
·
View notes
Welcome to the Dungeons of Fear and Hunger.
1K notes
·
View notes
lonely
[ID: A limited palette of green and pink, Vashwood comic. The first page serves as a prologue. The first panel shows Vash speaking to someone off screen while Wolfwood is lingering behind him. A black arrow is drawn pointing at him. In the second panel, Vash is buying donuts in the distance while Wolfwood is once again in view, lingering. and the black arrow is drawn pointing at him. In the third panel, Vash is leaving a cubicle and turning towards his right with a slightly peeved expression. He sees Wolfwood, leaning against the cubicle, waiting for him, and with the black arrow drawn, pointing at him, implicating the consistent hovering of Wolfwood’s presence during Vash’s everyday. At the bottom of the page, they’re drawn out of panel with Vash turning to Wolfwood and saying with an irritated expression, “You’re really following me everywhere, huh?” Wolfwood responds, “What, you got a problem?” Vash responds without hesitation, “Yeah, kinda...”
The second page starts with a new day. In the first panel, Vash is seen alone, weighing apples in his hands at a mart, with crowds passing behind him. In the second panel, he turns to his right and starts to say, “Hey, Wolfwood...” In the third panel, he’s startled from seeing a stranger, whom he’d accidentally called out to when he was expecting to see Wolfwood. He says, “Oh, you’re not him. Sorry!” In the fourth panel, the stranger walks off and Vash muses, “Right, he said he had something to do today...”
The third page begins with a close up of Vash's miffed expression, the continuation of Vash's thoughts, "Now that he's not here, this is just like how I used to be, but... It feels lonely somehow. Oh well, I'll see him again tonight, like always." In the second panel, it shows Vash walking through the marketplace crowd, alone. In the third panel, the door panel is a close up of the door opening with a peek of Vash's head. He says, "Wolfwood!" In the fourth panel, Vash is holding a bag of food with a bright smile and says, "Are you hungry? I got you something to eat today!"
The fourth page begins with a shot of the room, two beds being highlighted, one of them being made properly with the blanket draped over the bed and the other with the blanket folded and pillow sitting on top of it. There's no sign of Wolfwood. The second panel shows Vash with a disappointed look as he thinks, "He's still not here?" The third panel shows Vash putting the bag of food on the table. Stapled to the paper bag is the receipt with a written note "For Wolfwood." Vash's thoughts continue "He does like to stay out so, I guess there's no reason to worry..." The fourth panel shows Vash sitting his bed somberly with his thoughts continued, "It's not any of my business anyway..."
The fifth page starts with a close up his blank expression as he looks downwards, thinking, "Even if he left completely... That'd be understandable and better for him. I'll just travel alone again... like before... Huh?" The next panel shows Vash's composure break, tears welling up in his eyes suddenly, as he didn't expect to cry. He starts to sob, putting his hands to his face to quiet himself and wipe at his tears, as he says, "Ugh... Dammit... I miss h..." The last panel shows Vash leaning over into his hands, still crying, and in the back, the door swings wide open with a bam as Wolfwood walks through with the punisher swung behind him. He shouts, "SPIKEY! You in here?!"
The sixth page starts with Wolfwood confused, looking at Vash and Vash looks back, just as confused, with tears in his eyes and snot out of his nose. Wolfwood starts saying, "Ah? You..." No longer in panels, at the bottom of the page, Wolfwood takes the Punisher off of himself and starts to walk towards Vash, continuing with slight concern, "What's wrong with you? Did something happen?" Vash, hurriedly begins to wipe at his tears, denying immediately, "No! No, I'm fine! Nothing happened!"
The seventh page, Vash points towards the table, with a hand still wiping at his tears and he smiles as he says, "I uh got you food. On the table." Wolfwood looks towards to the table and responds, "Oh. I was getting hungry, thanks." He turns his head back to Vash immediately after with an uncertain expression, knowing the other wasn't responding to his concern, and says, "But, I know you're an idiot with this stuff, so I'm reminding you again. Don't brush it off if it's an issue, alright?"
The eight page, Vash's tears have dried and he looks to Wolfwood with a soft smile and responds, "Yeah. It's okay though..." A panel at the center shows a side view of Vash approaching Wolfwood. At the bottom of the page, with no panel, is a close up shot of Vash's hand, holding onto the edge of Wolfwood's jacket sleeve, as he says, "Because you're here now. Wolfwood."
The final page is a back shot of both of them standing next to each other, Wolfwood's head tilted slightly to the left, not fully believing Vash as he says, "That doesn't answer anything, Spikey." Vash responds, "There's no need to talk about it! You should enjoy your food. Let's have a drink too?" Wolfwood responds, "Tsk, tsk. Fine, yeah. I could use one." END ID]
3K notes
·
View notes
“Neris will NEVER be canon” what on god’s green earth makes you think I want SJM’s version of Neris 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
225 notes
·
View notes
AvM fandom is this accurate-
(pls don't burn me at the stake)
274 notes
·
View notes
*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?
tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.
154 notes
·
View notes
look i understand if people just don't like the idea of billford, i think we have a different internal concept of what shipping means (they're not good for each other at all but i need to dissect their dynamic like a bug. you understand. it's fun) but it's fine to avoid things you don't like, good for you genuinely
however people saying they like. don't see it. like. i'm not saying there's no platonic way to read it, i'm aroace spec myself i'm all for reading things in different ways. but i do think saying they weren't partners in any queer sense at all is trying too hard to go against what the narrative is trying to say, or missing it. somehow
anyway media literacy time if a character makes a joke like this
and the previous context of that joke within the show is that it's about an ex wife. what connection do you think the text is trying to get you to make.
and that's just from a writing point of view. not even noting that from an in universe perspective ford likely knows the joke from the same source as stan. and is therefore. placing himself in that role of the joke are you seeing where i'm coming from
(not to mention bill's side of this text which is. extremely manipulative but also does not read very platonic. again, it can technically be read as platonic! bill literally can manipulate ford's feelings. but the specific wording used is very much meant to look like possessive ex partner wording whether the character means it that way or not. it's coding. look again i'm not saying it was good for them i'm just saying there was something there.)
and then there's also the divorce/break up/rock bottom input on the website. like. how else is that supposed to be read. and the corresponding page in the book itself.
the language being used here. like yes he's saying it in a joking way but then there's the other side that isn't joking which is him crying at the bar. it's the both sides (the very coded language on top of the very genuine emotions and dynamic beneath)
i know most of us are on the same page with this i've just seen a couple people saying they don't see it when this is some of the most clear cut coding i've ever seen. and these are just the things that explicitly reference a relationship off the top of my head i'm not even including the general vibes of Everything
tl;dr it's barely even subtext anymore it's all but straight up text. what's not clicking have we forgotten what coding is (lighthearted i just enjoy the phrase what's not clicking. what's not clicking)
156 notes
·
View notes
*remembers the best gamefaqs forum question of all time*
845 notes
·
View notes
Whimsical
(click the image for higher quality yay)
210 notes
·
View notes
What’s funny about Jonathan’s magical girl transformation with the stark white hair is that it’s just impossible. Like, yes, we all know it is, but I hadn’t been focussing on that until now.
I was like “yeah, stress can cause early greying bc you’re no longer producing the melanin in your hair--” and then I realized like “wait, why would that change the colour of the already-grown strands as if they were fucking dead coral?” Because it’s not like if you pulled out a strand of your own hair, the colour would fade and go white.
Jonathan’s hair is alive? Dead now, alive before? Jonathan’s out here being Rapunzel from Tangled and everyone surrounding him is like “seems aight”.
4K notes
·
View notes
TONY: Standing next to sunflowers always makes me feel weak. Like, 'look at this fucking flower. This flower is taller than I am. This flower is winning and I am losing.'
STEPHEN: Wow, you are not ready to hear about trees.
542 notes
·
View notes
im gonna start a fight; and, at the same time, i need you to take this in the most good-faith way possible, but:
videos that involve body-checking and intentionally (and uncritically) show a mealplan of an unhealthy number of calories are just a revamped version of pro-ana food diaries.
and yeah, i know there's arguments. i address some of them under the cut. but at the end of the day, we're just coming back to romanticizing mental illness; we've just found a better platform for it.
this is already something we've done. we knew it was wrong and tried to stop it. and tbh. it just wasn't enough.
there are people who argue "well, what if you have an eating disorder, you can't help it if you don't eat!" except that as someone with an ED; we are not infants. we know what we're doing. part of having an ED is that you are like, maybe too self-aware. even if we can't help our own food choices, we don't need to fucking romanticize the disorder - something we've been warning you about since 2013. there are hours of setup, filming, and editing that go into these videos. they do not happen to fall into place randomly. there is a reason they are pieced together to be beautiful, bright, inspiring.
there's this woman who pretty much only posts daily plans under a normal amount of calories, and everyone defends her saying but it's better than nothing! and i'm like. except she opens those with images of her showing off her body and provides no context in the video or caption that suggests that she believes what she's doing is unhealthy. she has hundreds of thousands of followers on a platform designed for young kids and teens. i refuse to believe that by accident her content just happens to be cheery advice on "healthy" versions of starving.
for any other symptom of mental illness, we would be incredibly enraged by this kind of placid acceptance of a "tips and tricks" fast-start guide. imagine if people posted pink & pretty videos saying "best places to cut yourself" as if it was a fucking storytime. we, as a society, are so fucking fatphobic that we would rather accept blatantly harmful displays of self harm than admit that we are obsessed with a hyper-thin body type.
i am not suggesting someone never talks about their disorder. i talk about mine. actually, it's a plot point in my book.
here's the difference: i recognize it's a fucking mental illness. i am very careful to never mention a specific weight, eating pattern, or calorie plan. i always make sure to position it as something that ruined my fucking life. i do not put cheery music in the background and hearts and sparkles over my worst moments. i do not film it in bright light. i do not start each passage with an image of a thin body followed by "here's how to look like her."
eating disorders should not be framed as aspirational. and the problem is that society worships the "after" image, so long as you don't get too sick. there is a reason so many people who quit being "influencers" will later admit - i wasn't eating well that whole time; an obsession with food was completely destroying my life.
we let any uncredited, uncertified person write the most backwards, fucked up shit about how to get the body you desire! because the underlying, secret belief is: well, at least they're thin! and the real thing that fucking gets me each time - they make fucking money off of it. their irresponsibility and societal harm literally pays off for them.
"why do you care so much." "don't like it don't look." "so what if people experiment with new ways of thinking of food?"
thank you for asking. we're about to get extremely personal. it's because when i was 18 i discovered "thinspiration"/"thinspo." and it absolutely influenced, shaped, and codified my pre-existing eating disorder. i went from having some troubling habits and traits to being incredibly unwell within what felt like a matter of days. there were actual pages designed to train me on how to have an ED correctly. it was all so suddenly easy. i was sick; and the nature of the illness meant - i wanted to be sicker.
it takes an average of 7 years for a person to fully recover. i know this personally - even now, 10 years from the worst of it, i still fucking struggle. i am so much happier now and i eat what i want and i literally don't think about food at all (19 year old me would shudder) and yet - i still fucking know the calories of plain toast with butter.
an eating disorder is one of the deadliest types of mental illness. over 1 in 4 people with an ED will attempt suicide.
and i'm sorry. i just do not see the exchange rate of "high rate of engagement" versus "the value of a human life."
1K notes
·
View notes