it’s bonkers to me that people will say oh but you don’t have to look/be like that!!! to butch lesbians/lesbians who present masculine. they will look u in the face and essentially say you can be a lesbian without being an ugly yucky self loathing stereotype!!!! and it absolutely just boggles my mind because like. i’ve fucked around with my gender presentation a ton. i’ve had my head shaved at a two and my hair past my shoulders; it’s also been every color imaginable. i’ve let my body hair grow out and also shaved everywhere, even my arms, from ages 13-23 because i was bullied for having dark arm hair in middle school. i’ve worn “boy clothes” and “girl clothes” and weird lesbian mixes of both. i used to have to be wearing makeup to ever leave the house and i’d work myself up into a literal panic at the idea of people seeing me without it. i used to have a very persistent and active eating disorder furthered by extreme dysmorphia and a lack of self worth because i thought my body had to look a certain way, be a certain way, to be good enough.
but butchness brought me fucking freedom from so much of that. learning about butch identity and reading posts from other butches taught me that i can exist just like this, without doing an exhausting myriad of uncomfortable things that felt more restrictive than affirming. seeing femmes and butches and people in between online express desire towards butches made me realize it’s not just some anomaly my partner is into me; butches just are hot and desirable. i can look and dress the way i want, and embody both feminine and masculine traits without having to worry about adhering correctly to a performance i don’t think i ever got the right script for. i can be butch and be seen for what and who i am and there’s just nothing ugly about any of that to me.
it’s like. yeah, i don’t have to be butch, but i’ve tried everything else and this is the first time in 25 years i actually feel some semblance of comfortable with my body and myself in general. i don’t have to be butch, but it lets me set aside familiar self loathing and exchange it instead for the same love and appreciation i can extend to other masculine lesbians. i guess don’t have to be butch, i just don’t see why i’d wanna be anything else.
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lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)
if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.
--
no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.
I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.
I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.
If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.
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something bad happened to you, and you died, and you came back wrong.
not wrong all the way. the little ways. you forget important dates, stopped going out with friends. it's harder to make you smile. you're apathetic towards things you used to love, afraid of places you used to go to cheer up. quieter. flinching. different.
you came back for love. you're still here for love. what pulled you back was a brightness so loud that even death couldn't outshout it. death heard the call and smiled at you and said okay. go home. somebody is waiting for you.
but you came back different. like lot's wife; you've turned into salt. you used to chirp through life in hops and skips; but now you lose skin just standing up. you have to move slower, skimming across this world without-touching-it. most things feel dull - until they're suddenly all-too-much. life, and being alive just rushes up and over you and you get hopelessly crushed.
you try to explain it to them: it is ugly, but this is what you are, now. the huge golden hoop of your halo now a little bronze ring. you are still watering your plants and wearing the same clothes. after all, you worked hard to come home. this life; so odd and off-color, now that you are wrong.
but they waited for you - it's just that they wanted the "you" that happened before this. the "you" that could sing in the show and hug people tight and look at a blade without breaking down to cry. the you with a smile in pictures. god, holyshit, it's like looking at a completely different person, isn't it. that other-you; the one they actually wanted.
you are the consolation prize. you are the body that forgot the ghost. you are the memory of the bad thing, and the death after; like you are wearing that memory as a banner. you are a fragment, an assembly. simulacrum. you don't make eye contact in mirrors, afraid the light will glance off and your true nature will flash back at you.
you hear them talk about it in their hushed, desperate whispers. sometimes they even admit it to your face; harsh and violent, acid thrown at christmas dinner. god, can you just fucking be normal again. you do not remember what normal is. you had to climb so far to get back here; you are far too exhausted. you want to open the glass door of your heart and show all the gears. can you help resolve whatever got messed up?
you try so, so hard. you came back for them. because you believed they would love you, even when you were so horribly broken. because you believed they would be patient. because you believed unconditional meant "without exception." you cannot do things the same way. you just get tired too quickly these days.
you want to put them on a couch and pour them the tea with hands that shake more than they remember. you want to line them up and draw them a map of where you have had to wander. you want to show every bruise in a backsplash; the little helpless ant of your soul carrying all that weight, over and over. you want to say: yes! it is different! but i did it for love!
you want to say: "i'm not the same, but i'm yours and i'm here. can that be enough?"
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Danny fake guardian angel au
You know how sometimes it’s highlighted how you have to be very careful on what you say in the presence of a spirit because they can twist your words and end up bidding yourself to it?? well uno-reverse-card the spirit also has to be careful on what he says because when Danny had said he owed the dude one for coming to his rescue in a gala Vlad had dragged him to, he didn’t expect that to be taken literally.
danny: wait seriously?? i literally say that all the time!
cw: not after being crowned ghost king, you haven’t
danny: but—but I was also human when I said it. doesn’t that protect me or smth
cw: *shakes his head*
danny:
danny: omg this is a nightmare
cue timmy’s brucequest period (cuz he’s the guy) being so high strung and tired, he just wants some company, which is a so low stakes thing to want the deal Danny unintentionally goes sure we can do that and pulls him towards the guy, despite Timmy never outright saying he wants company. (tim always speaks in the sanctity of his own mind, not out loud)
So. random spirit manifesting. Tim going all who the fuck are u
and Danny panicking and saying your guardian angel
Tim not being impressed while Danny promptly blushes like a moron because that did not come off as he wanted it to.
Yes accidental dead tired where the dynamic goes from Tim trying to shake this probably demon that somehow latched to him being all like ??? dude leave me alone, and Danny being there like bitch i’m trying
to
huh. im actually being protected by a spirit like he said he would. he’s strangely an idiot but also he’s overpowered and just never leaves my side which he says it’s an angel obligation but I think it’s bullshit but also hoping it’s not because it appeals to my crippling fear of abandonment (anyways he really seems to take after those little cartoon angels that poof into your shoulder to keep from me doing wrong decisions) translate into my future boyfriend seems increasingly appalled to what i am up to
meanwhile danny
Bitch you better thank your god I’m dead because otherwise I would already been killed. I did not sign up for a assassins what the fuck I thought you were a normal civilian not a literal superhero and omg that is a fruitloop. no no back off you wrinkly raisin this is my emotional support idiot you can’t have him and what do you mean you’re messing with time whatever this way I can get back to clockwork—
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