#idk i'm still working this stuff out

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

I'm really contemplating whether or not I can in good conscience keep thinking of myself as queer, which is kind of painful for me, because I have a lot of attachment to what it means to me. But it really does clearly mean something very different to most people, and I don't want to ignore that reality. It bothers me that when I say it, people might reasonably believe I'm talking about a particular type of ideology and political agenda that can be separated from the Normie Gays and the Hateful Assimilationists, that a person could learn about then choose to agree with and support or not agree with and support, because I've always felt strongly that being queer isn't a type of politics you can have, it's an experience of existing in a politicized way.

I'm well aware that 90% of the people in my Tumblr orbit perceive me (or would if they knew me) as one of the Hateful Assimilationists, which in some sense I agree that I am. I think it's actually a reasonably psychologically healthy goal to want to be a participating member of one's community and culture, although that's not the only thing I think a reasonably psychologically healthy person should care about. And it's not the only thing I care about, but I do want to just -- go about my business in life, and do my job and shop and socialize and deal with bureaucracy and attend events and never have to navigate feeling anxious or unwelcome or unsafe simply because I exist in public and other people have feelings about that. To myself, I feel -- normal, I'm just a person, I'm not doing anything that I feel like should be all that bothersome or intrusive to other people. It's other people who are intrusive when I I just am here, looking like they don't think I should look, having a family they don't think I should have.

So, like -- I'm not queer because that's some kind of mission statement for me, I know other queer people like the idea of having a Disruptive Agenda, but my agenda is and has always been trying to convince other people to be less rude and weird about me, because I'm just like, some person who is alive and trying to get through life like anyone else, like everyone else. As far as I'm concerned, I have never been the weird one; people who have absolutely no stake in my clothes, name, sex life, facial hair, general manner of existing, and yet feel thoroughly empowered to inflict their uninvited opinions about those things on me -- those people seem bizarre to me.

So when I've used the word queer, it's always been an acknowledgement that these are non-normative ways of being, and these are stigmatized ways of being, and there has been an ongoing experience of stigmatization and marginalization in my life that I recognize as a broadly shared experience with many other flavors of gender identity and sexuality minorities. And I need language like that to be able to say, hey, I recognize that across our diverse experiences, we've all been defined out of Normalcy whether or not we wanted to be. That's been placed on us, similar to the way that "non-white" and "people of color" are categories people are placed in by the hegemonic power of white supremacy, not because there's something inherently Other or Non about having skin darker than a Styrofoam cup, or because every other ethnic phenotype in the world shares some particular quality. The only quality they share is the way that whiteness Others them, and the quality I share with all other queer people is the way that heteronormativity Others all of us.

But it's used so often by so many other people as a signifier of some ideological commitment to an adequate level of Smashing the Patriarchy, and I'm not remotely interested in a vision of queerness that audits people's beliefs and motives and degree of radicalism, because for a lot of people, simply existing is as much radical disruption as they're able or willing to commit to, and that's frankly their business, not mine. Queer people spend our lives being judged and excluded, measured and found wanting. I'm just not up for a vision of queerness that imposes yet another external standard that people have to figure out how to meet in order to avoid hearing some version of "you're not queer, you're just a girl who likes girls" or whatever the current clever zing is about why they don't make the cut.

The world ascribes political meaning to our existence, it thinks that us merely wanting to live is "activism" and "radical leftism" and "the woke mind virus" or whatever the fuck. But we're not issues, we're fundamentally people, and presumably over the course of our lives we'll identify with any number of different issues and goals and beliefs, but we were people at birth and have always been and will always be people, and that is what I personally think should be at the center of whatever we're trying to do as a community, I think here you can be seen as the person you are is more impactful work than trying to make sure we don't accidentally embrace any Assimilationists.

I'm not saying there's nothing political about it when I call myself queer, but I am saying that the statement "gender and sexuality diversity is just part of the human experience, we are simply humans no matter what" is unfortunately already politicized. I wish it weren't. I wish that were just a thing I could believe in because it seems objectively true to me and it didn't have any particular politics attached to it. I would like my actual causes to be, like, climate change and food justice and socialized medicine! It's a bummer to me that I have to spend so much of my life asserting my own basic humanity, and I would like even more of the straight world to come around and join me in just not thinking my transness or my bisexuality are particularly fascinating aspects of my personality.

I don't know, I've just never been a "queer as in fuck you" person, and I never am going to be -- I can certainly get mad enough to be combative at times, but that's not fundamentally who I am or how I see the world. I like communities and I like getting along with people when I can, I like social safety nets and good neighbors and ethics of care, and I don't want people -- including me! -- to feel forced to the margins of their families and communities and churches and schools and jobs. I think it's good to want to belong to things and painful and often traumatic to be excluded and shunned. I know you do have to set some functional limits to your inclusion, paradox of tolerance and all that, but I also think you don't make a good life or a good world without some degree of learning to practice civility and coalition building and compromise. Those are the things that make communities, because if you can only deal with the people you easily mesh with, that's gonna end up being simply not enough people to survive.

So I want to draw boundaries wide, for practical purposes, and also because like I said, that is my core value, that people have inherent worth and dignity that doesn't depend on their actions or their ideas, but simply on the fact of their humanity. I think queer people need advocacy and need respect and need community even if I also think those people are full of shit, and my allegiance to the idea of queerness has always been about that respect -- that you don't need to justify exactly where you fit in order to fit here, that we make room for people to be themselves who have otherwise been told it's not okay to be themselves.

[little-pondhead]

DP x DC Prompt

…

There are no more heroes.

Well, okay. Rewind a bit.

Danny has been doing the hero thing for a while now. He’s had a big reveal; everyone has accepted him (including his parents), the GIW disbanded, the Anti-Ecto acts repealed, and generally, everything is going great. Some of the A-Listers are even training as junior ghost hunters to help give him a break from his rogues! (Being Ghost King makes things hectic sometimes, and he just needs the extra help. Sue him!)

The point is, literally nothing is wrong with Danny Phantom’s afterlife.

And then Valerie Gray, the Red Huntress, disappears in front of his eyes.

Danny is baffled! She’s just…gone! Valerie just popped out of existence, like she was never there. But no matter how hard he searches in the Ghost Zone, he can’t find her soul anywhere. His core isn't broken in grief. So she’s not dead. Which is good. So then, where is she?

Some of the others come forward with ideas on how to find her. A few ghosts volunteer to go out into the mortal realm, an area Danny had declared off-limits, to see if she was out there. Danny approves it. He rounds up some of the friendlier (i.e., discreet) ghosts and Amity Parkers and demolishes the outside travel ban.

So everyone spreads out, looking for their dear frenemy and teammate. But it becomes apparent very quickly that something is wrong with the rest of the world.

There are no more heroes.

Every single living superhero on the face of the Earth has just…vanished. Villains are running amok; the countries are in chaos! Some aliens are invading Earth, mythical deities are trying to take over, and society is crumbling to the ground. Everything is on the brink of collapse.

Well, Danny was still there. And so were his people. They were pretty spread out, so could they just…take up the mantles? He also knew where to find the souls of dead heroes in the Zone; surely they wouldn't mind coming out of retirement for a little bit, especially if they couldn't die again. Oh! And that skeleton army leftover from Pariah Dark's reign might be useful in repelling those invading forces.

Honestly, there were more than enough hands to go around! And with the heroes gone, Danny didn't mind letting everyone out for a little break, as long as they followed his rules. They wouldn't stop the search for the other heroes, but hopefully, when they found them, the heroes wouldn't mind Danny's intervention too much. :)

In other words:

Someone fucks up, and all of Earth's living heroes are either wished out of existence or are whisked away to some far-off realm where Danny hasn't checked yet. In the attempt to figure out what's going on, Danny lets the dead run amok over the Earth as they search for clues. The skeleton army repels the invading armies, the souls of dead heroes deal with the world leaders, and his rogues and other Amity Parkers set up shop in place of famous heroes, trying to get the cities under control again.

Basically, they just do their best to keep everything from imploding until the Justice League and others are back.

(And why is it that Danny hasn't disappeared? Well, whatever caused everyone to go poof! only affected living heroes. Anyone heroes that were dead in the first place, or even just half-dead, stayed behind.)

[bbq-potato-chip]

thinking about saiura

[sylvhen]

just having a normal one thinking about how badly Armand wants to be loved but every time he gets close to it, he self sabotages and ruins it. almost as if. he subconsciously doesn't think he deserves it.

[sammunmak]

Specs & Max Freelance Police in: Hells-A-Poppin'!

+ sam’s vices !!

this is basically an au idea i had for the alt timeline! i wrote out all the changes to the first two seasons, but it's a bit on the longer side so i'm sticking it under the cut.

this takes place immediately after sam and max steal the elevator from their future selves. there’s no obvious changes at first. the director gives them another contract after telling her they misplaced the first one, but not without threat of not giving them another one if they manage to misplace this one. once they wrap up the case and free myra stump from the hypnosis, they take the elevator (and their music contract) with them and put it away in storage, vowing to never speak of the possibility that they just killed their future selves again. ah well, knowing themselves, they probably survive. everything else afterwards is pretty much the same, though when sam and max see superball for the first time sam asks max if he looks familiar. max takes one look at him and proudly declares nope, not at all, and that’s the end of that.

the first major change happens in 106.

hugh: for in all the universe, there’s only one force chaotic and destructive enough to stop me now! but you wouldn’t do that, would you max?

max: who, ME? well, i’m- i’m flattered, but-

hugh: no you wouldn’t, not without your trusty partner, at least.

max: huh?

sam: what exactly are you implying?

hugh: i’m going to… drumroll, please… [drumroll] separate your bliss!

max: really?

sam: what does that even mean?!

hugh: it means i chop off every part of you i don’t like! it’s like circumcision, but double the laughs.

max: he-ey!

sam: quiet, knucklehead.

sam gets split into 3 vices. gluttony, greed, and wrath. wrath is formed from sam’s right ear, greed is formed from sam’s left hand (it even keeps the wedding band!), and gluttony is formed from. well, the stomach. max loses all romantic interest he had in hugh bliss in that moment. 

max is very annoyed about the whole situation. he never has to do work on their cases, and suddenly he’s being forced to figure everything out on his own! but seeing sam’s awful blissed-out state is worse. blissed-out sam is basically just a big puppy. all smiles, completely clueless about everything around him, and has to be led around by his remaining hand if max wants him to go anywhere. max considers shooting him every time he makes a comment about hugging trees or something sentimental crap like that, but one look at that big dopey grin on sam’s face and he just can’t do it. he needs to turn sam back quickly, he’s turning into a sap just being near this… shell of his partner.

wrath is in the sanctuary, threatening the COPS for information on max’s whereabouts (yes it’s just noir sam lol). when max and bliss sam finally make their appearance, wrath almost immediately tries to shoot bliss sam. max stops it, of course. it seems like max is the only person wrath won’t lash out against. max has to open one of bluster blaster’s side panels, then get wrath close enough to it to shut the panel on his ear, pulling it off wrath when it tries freeing itself.

once sam gets his ear back, he seems to randomly decide to shoot at max.

max: what was that for?!

sam: i dunno, it just felt right.

when max walks into bosco’s store, he immediately makes eye contact with gluttony sam, who’s sitting on the floor eating a giant tub of ice cream. it doesn’t seem very interested in eating actual people (haha foreshadowing?) in the freezer are a bunch of popsicles. max can grab one and give it to gluttony, who’ll chomp it down wrapper and all. max has to put jimmy two-teeth into one of the wrappers in order to get gluttony to eat him, then pull out jimmy and sam’s stomach with the magic hat.

sam: anyone else suddenly got a hankerin’ for a fudgie freeze?

max: you don’t know how glad i am to hear you say those words.

greed is inside the office, hoarding just about everything in there and more. somehow there’s items in here max didn’t even know they had. or maybe greed just grabbed everything not bolted down to the floor on the way back to the office.

max has to buy bosco’s invention (which is just a big magnet), then use the spoon bending talisman to pull the spork out of the hugh bliss statue’s hand, give it to greed, and then use the magnet to drag its ass towards him and just yank sam’s hand off it.

sam: are you using that magnet?

max: nope! it’s all yours.

upon collecting all 3 vices, sam returns to normal, and they can now go fight hugh bliss. cue world of max :)

not much else changes until 204.

once they enter momma bosco’s store and accidentally reveal max’s lack of interest in girls, momma bosco becomes infatuated with him. sam and max try and argue against this for a while, until max tells her that he’s a married man.

ms b: i don’t see a ring on your finger.

max: well check again!

max flashes his left hand, revealing a bare ring finger. oh. he didn’t put on his ring today. sam is missing his ring as well. seems they got a bit excited when flint invited them on a case with him and forgot them.

(not gonna lie this whole puzzle isnt fully fleshed out. the whole plan would be that they have to go back to their prom and essentially crash it in order to help max realize he doesn’t like girls. i did also have the idea of superball printing marriage certificates instead of patents, which they’d need to grab one from him and hang it on the corkboard in the near future, then go to the distant future and take their wedding rings from their future selves. if i do ever have an idea of how exactly this all pans out i’ll make it into a fic or something. for now tho this is the best i could come up with.)

max is very proud to show off his new wedding ring to momma bosco.

later on, sam is glad he kept that music contract on him, once one of the pedros asks for one.

of course, despite keeping their past selves from boarding the UFO, the elevator is still oddly enough missing when they run back to it.

max: hey, the elevator’s gone! what gives?

sam: hmm… remember what got us into this whole mess, the temporal anomalies and whatnot? maybe it’s another one of those? maybe this is the universe’s way of trying to correct the timeline, and we have to leave the same way our future selves did, since we’re-

max: alright, alright! less talky more- figuring out how to get off this dang ship!

ah well, having two elevators seems a bit overkill anyway. 

not so long later, in 205:

sam: you better release our pals’ souls from hell, cause my excitable little friend is getting angry.

max: and i’m angry, too!

satan: there’s no need for that kind of talk. i’ll gladly release your friends. just sign this release.

max: hold on sam, i got this!

sam: …you sure, max? 

max: positive! watch this. [he pulls out a crayon and scribbles his name on the contract]

satan: and that’s that.

sam: well that was pretty easy.

satan: now just do me a favor and think of the most horrible thing you can imagine.

max: ooh, that might take a second, there’s so many- oh, maybe- wait no, i’ve got it!

satan: good. now off you go!

[max disappears]

sam: sweet summering sausages sweltering on a busy sidewalk, what did you do?!

satan: he traded his soul for that of all your friends. they never read the fine print. now max will spend eternity in his own personal hell!

max: back in the office? where’s my partner?

specs: i’m over here!

max finds himself stuck inside a now very tidy office with specs, the neat freak of the soda poppers.

max: so where’s my REAL partner?

specs: what are you talking about, i AM your real partner.

max: uh, no. last i checked my partner was a six foot tall dog in a suit, not… you.

specs: oh, max. clearly you’re confused. you’ve always had a terrible memory. but don’t worry, i’m here to keep everything in order for you.

max is just about ready to start ripping out patches of his fur when he sees sam, sticking his big nose through the hole in their office wall. after a bit of arguing, max remembers the key card. he yells at sam to use it so they can kick demon’s spec’s ass together. when sam gets in there they do just that, ending in sam throwing the demon out the open window. with max’s personal hell defeated and leonard’s soul free they leave and finally go and confront satan.

as a bonus, a fun change to a piece of dialogue in 201:

sam: how long do you think it’ll take for one of us to kick the bucket?

max: i dunno, but i think if one of us were to go, the other would follow very close behind. maybe not even by choice!

sam: does that mean if i go first, i can take you with me?

max: sure does! in fact, i encourage it!

[ptr-sqloint]

what’s your rendering process like?

ehhh i kinda work as if i was using paint? i do a flat colour+sketch layer and on the layer above i do all the rendering (or sometimes on the same layer). i stick to opaque brushes and use colour picking rather than blending brushes

i also use the eraser tool or a background colour to sort of. sculpt the shapes i want to make

[royalarchivist]

undefined

Techno imitating Phil and his iconic “Hey mate” line during MCC5

[nulltune]

——  hakuno jumpscare !  

( staring ominously at ur muse. )

[kaialone]

Thinking about the fact that A.B.A's creator (I wanna call him Dr. Paracelsus to differentiate him from key Paracelsus) could very well still be alive out there somewhere, cause he wasn't said to have been killed, he was just taken by a military organization (?!) for his skills-

And while I don't think they ever confirmed a connection, it feels like almost too obvious that he'd be in some way tied to the creation of Frasco II, given that it's called Frasco II

I need to know more

[cordate-chordata]

They're on my mind

[arvoze]

How's the comic going

well. erm. you see

nonexistent currently (however i will answer comic-related asks (regarding the characters) with short/quick comics where applicable in the meantime)

[sofastuffing]

i have a headache

[finncakes]

if i project on her hard enough i'll get a cane :]

[adelle-ein]

the cut between a rune factory wedding and kiryu beating the shit out of people was an absolute peak direct moment

[soppsop]

i just rememberd adhd meds exist and now im upset because i could have that if it wasn't for that freakin neurologyst we went to see that told us it was impossible that i could have adhd because i have good grades in school. literally the ONLY question he asked me and immediately said it was impossible. we spent like 5 minutes there. he could've at least... explained something???? anything?????? and now i'd feel bad about asking my parents to see another neurologist because that costs a lot of money :((

[ookaookaooka]

IT'S FINALLY (almost) DOOOOONE