#healthy enough

[k0kichiimagines]

oh my God?? theres actually medicine and shit you can do what the fuck no one told me this

[mary-james-world-of-shames]

Everyone know oavement on TikTok? Yeah. Love them. Have this comic I made late at night half trying to be sweet and the other half trying to make my sibling laugh.

[lunarcrown]

OLLD drawing I can share now of Timmy after recovery and care from staying on double life and being looked after by the box boys~

He’s healthier, happier, his hair and wings have grown back out and have a pretty blue-black sheen to them (that he never knew he had bc in hels his diet and environment only let them be dull) and he just heard the sound of a portal opening for someone to come visit~!

[hajihiko]

a long time ago I was like "I bet there are a lot of characters that are both touch-starved and touch-averse" so. Thinks

Impostor explanation: has been around the whole scale as various identities, has a hard time understanding themselves and their own true preference. Tends to just adjust to whoever they're around.

[pangur-and-grim]

this broken leg experience has made me realize how much muscle you need just to move around the house. I can walk without the cast now, but squatting to pick something up? kneeling and then rising? even standing for a long period in the kitchen takes a lot. and carrying things too, that’s something I couldn’t do while hopping about on crutches. every night I’ve been going to sleep with sore legs and arms just from performing my normal non-intensive household tasks.

[gay-otlc]

(through gritted teeth) I am HOPEFUL and ENTHUSIASTIC about life. There are things in my future I am LOOKING FORWARD TO and I WANT to live

[mossy-aro]

ultimately i think my insistence on aro positivity honestly is as much a political stance as a personal one.

when i say aro positivity is crucial and that i dislike doomer-ist posts that express sentiments like 'I hate being aro so much I wish I was dead instead’ it's not because I don’t think there can and should be a space for negativity and acknowledging self-hate, or the many ways being aromantic can really suck sometimes. i find that to be very important!

that being said. there is smth here about how self-hate posts are sometimes just arophobia that we inflict on ourselves. and when we put that out into the ether it (intentionally or not) can become arophobia that we inflict on other members of the community. i think there absolutely needs to be a place for negativity and the expression of anger and frustration and self loathing even - these are all good things to talk about because these are things that we experience. that being said, it can also be genuinely upsetting and triggering to people to have what is essentially arophobia shown to them and then have that be validated by other aspec people. your personal thoughts can affect your wider community on a level you may not anticipate. and i understand it i truly do! it took me so long to be able to recover from accepting being aroace - it threw my entire world off kilter and made me question everything about my place in the world.

but my insistence on aro joy and positivity is because ultimately i do believe that building is at the core essence of it all. that ultimately discussions and the purpose of community should be about construction, not destruction. and this is both a personal and a political stance. talking about how much you hate yourself and cultivating online discussions/spaces where negativity about aspec identity is the main and only theme is destructive - if that’s where we let the conversation end. these thoughts can and should be used as a vehicle to look for a path forward!

joy and positivity create a space where the focus can become on forging a path forward, on construction, on community building instead of tearing ourselves and others down with negative thoughts. it’s not productive or healthy when it stops at a place of negativity - it becomes actively destructive to the essence of community.

and i do think that this is especially poignant considering the fact that being any kind of queer, but especially aromantic (and/or asexual) means forging a path for yourself and making your own happiness where there is no obvious way forward. our communities exist mostly online (right now, anyway), there is little recognition of our existence in the real world, the effects of amatonormativity are both pervasive and actively dehumanising, and there are legal, economic and social structures in place actively making our lives more difficult. yes that all sucks! it’s good to acknowledge that. we need to in order to change it. but more importantly, that’s not the end. we are still here and our happiness, our future is for us to determine. even if we can’t change the laws or society, loving yourself and understanding aromanticism as a political identity (as well as personal), as a radical worldview, and as a protest against amatonormativity is essential for both community and personal well being. the personal is political.

tldr. i guess my point is that as a community, we should focus on building, improving, and nurturing ourselves and each other (construction) as opposed to destruction. we should recognise aromanticism and asexuality as political identities as well as personal ones and rely on community and self-love in the absence of anything else as a form of protest and political power. destruction (the recognition of everything that is wrong) is essential as a starting point - but where do we go from there? we rebuild.

[mrsterlingeverything]

This was so much work for me!

[parvuls]

no, because - famous person starts dating less famous person and is then gradually overshadowed is a trope. a trope often used to bring external conflict into stories. but jack and bitty are carefully constructed as the opposite of that, and I'm fucking feral over it.

we joke about how jack will eventually be bitty's trophy husband and be thrilled about it, but it definitely has a giant grain of truth in it. it's how they're characterized. bitty is an extrovert; jack is an introvert. bitty reached out and built himself an online audience to deal with his trauma; jack shut himself out and started avoiding the public to deal with his.

bitty finds comfort in being able to talk to others and (as seen in spotlight on eric bittle) considers being a public figure a sort of healing experience: coming out and being a public person (in every manner of speaking, not just sexuality wise) and putting himself in the limelight is such an important part of his journey because he sees it as a way of helping others who were in his situation.

jack grew up in the spotlight as the only son of two prominent figures. he grew up as a child with anxiety with the media's eyes on him as he was compared to his father. he grew up as an overweight teen featuring in trashy gossip columns as he was compared to his mother. he got into rehab in part because of this attention and it only attracted more attention to him. a lot of jack's anxiety stems from the notion of people looking at him and thinking about him and talking about him and judging him, and it's unfortunate because jack's dream is to play hockey, and that comes with even more attention.

but that's the thing: jack and bitty's story is (once again) a demonstration of two people making each other's lives better.

jack's fame thrusts bitty into the spotlight post-cup, and it's a giant push forward in helping him reach a bigger audience and thus grow his independent fame. bitty's growing fame slowly overshadows jack, to the point where ngozi says they'll one day be Eric Bittle and his Athlete Husband. and that means jack gets to play hockey, and win cups, and achieve fame in his own field, but the media's attention slides off him to his husband, and the fans on the street gradually approach bitty more than him, and jack is free to have his success with less of the personal scrutiny.

it's not that jack becomes less important than bitty. it's that bitty gets to stand in front of the direct sun and flourish as a result, while jack gets to stand in the shade bitty creates and flourish as a result. it's symbiosis. it's beautiful.

[vanhelsingapologist]

Publishing has always been a fucking nightmare, but now it’s a layer of hell. It’s not enough that writers be good at what they do. Writers have to maintain an active social media presence and cultivate a following. Be available.

They have to be conventionally attractive enough to look good enough to see on a screen, aesthetically pleasing, kind, funny, up-to-date on trends, socially aware but not so controversial that they turn off a brand from California from slapping their discount code on a video promoting a book.

They have to do all of this with no media training, with little help from the companies that are supposed to be doing this for them.

Of course, a lot of this isn't possible for say, the 40-something mother of two who teaches English at a school and writes on the side. She’s boxed out of an already complex industry that already has enough walls.

On some level, I think authors have always marketed themselves a little, but we’ve reached such a crazy point where we’re demanding the author become the influencer. Accessibility in publishing has narrowed from an inch to a sliver. And that inch was hard enough to get in as is.

[loserboyfriendrjl]

“Sirius left both grimmauld place and his little brother regulus behind!!!” I’m going to hold your hand when i say this. No he didn’t. Sirius didn’t exist as some sort of saviour of Regulus’. He didn’t exist to tell Regulus to do something he didn’t want to do. Regulus made his choice and he did what he wanted to do. Sirius made his choice and he did what he wanted to do. He didn’t leave Regulus behind because Regulus wanted to stay and because Regulus did not want to become something better than the beliefs instilled in him.

[fruitageoforanges]

elia martell character of all time because she was playing the game of thrones AND WINNING — survived aerys, set up an alternate court on dragonstone, universally beloved even by most of robert’s anti-targ regime, was probably at least angling to get rid of aerys — but the literal song of ice and fire was being written around her and well. you can’t outrun your inevitable doom.

like. that’s elia’s tragedy, and what makes me so insane about her. she was in the wrong story. she was playing the game of court politics but ended up yoked to 300 years of targaryen collapse and dynastic rot instead. there’s nothing i love more than characters doing their best with the pieces they can see on the board, while the fact slowly dawns on them that the board is in the process of being swallowed by an eldritch monster.

[fryday]

idk who needs to hear this rn but i know i did when i was first starting out on this blog so here it is: the experience of engaging with fandom becomes exponentially more enjoyable once you realise that nothing you post or think about really relates to dnp as human beings in their real lives. the awareness of our parasociality is actually so critical to the enjoyment of *gestures broadly to the tumblr phandom ecosystem* this, at least imo. because once i understood that this idea of dan and phil that i interact with, analyse, discuss and make jokes about is, in fact, just an IDEA, a semi-fictional semi-embellished PRODUCT that they have both put out into the public as professional comedians and personalities - i became free to completely enjoy it for what it is. a thing that's MEANT to be analysed, and joked about, and obsessed over, the same way someone can obsess over a book character that's been intentionally crafted for a specific purpose and nobody gives a damn about it.

the difference lies in how we actually CAN'T detrimentally affect a book character by shoving our obsession in their face, whereas in fandoms of real life people that is an actual danger. and that's where the awareness of our parasociality with dnp comes in again, and where we have to draw the line ourselves.

but on YOUR side of the line, ie where dnp won't venture, where you're not harming anyone? you can have fun. and it's okay

[silverraes]

I am so entirely serious, I'm gonna need future BL to take SO many notes about the relationships in this show

the way this one simple line tells us so much about how much Fang loves his brother while also acknowledging that sometimes we need someone outside of our family to turn to. the way this moment also tells us how much he cares about Tan even if he might not always be the best at showing it. the way they're all just there for each other.

this show genuinely fills my heart with so much joy it's insane.

[iizuumi]

Absolutely obsessed with this fic, had to draw it ♥

[purpleshadow-star]

Hc that once Nico starts eating well, he kinda loses control of his powers a bit. He's only ever used his powers while malnourished, even while learning how to use them, so once he actually has full energy, he keep accidentally using too much of his power because he's too used to having to exert a lot more energy than he should need to do even small things. Like, he tries to summon a bone and accidentally summons a couple full-size skeletons instead, he tries to summon a ghost, and he accidentally summons a few hundred, things like that. His powers have never felt so easy to use before, but he has to relearn control now that he's not half starving and low on energy all the time.