there's something about butches reclaiming protectiveness and chivalry from an imposed "caring, nurturing" character associated and often forced upon women. something about how while straight men often try to present as careless as possible, masculinity and care are not only not conflicting in the butch identity, but inherent to it. there's something there.
What if when Michael got Distortioned he/they/it/(?) had just kept showing up to work? Imagine Gertrude comes into the archives and finds a bunch of paperwork filled out in yellow highlighter and folded into impossible shapes, and then Michael-Distortion just walks into the room door-style and sits down at his work computer so it can email Gertrude a phishing scam.
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?
Someday could you give us tips to draw chubby bodies?
i once put together some tips on how I draw fat for a friend so i suppose i can share those right now :) just keep in mind that these might not help everyone and that i mostly don't know what i'm talking about. it's just how i personally draw idk
and i cannot reccomend the book morpho: fat and skin folds by Michael Lauricella enough. it's an amazing resource for learning and it really changed the way i understand fat as an artist
Dp x dc twin au where Danny and Damian were in fact conjoined/siamese twins, but the most dangerous type - one head, two bodies.
Their early removal from talia being because their shape would not have allowed for natural birth, they were written off but talia begged for the chance to send them off in the lazarus pit.
By some bizarre miracle, before she turned to leave, two small bodies bobbed to the surface - identical in every way, except for the eyes. The previous blue eyes now split in two, one left, one right, and the new eyes, pit created, a bright green.
She took her child, her two children, and together, they survived.
Being removed prematurely, their early years were tough, but soon they blossomed into promising heirs for the league. In sync with every step, the closest of brothers, the league was certain the old fairy tale of twins being telepathic had been granted by the pit that separated them, the remnants of being born as one mind, one brain, one skull.
But then Danny had to flee, and leave his other half behind. Stretched by distance for the first time, the bond grew thin and stretched, and Damian grieved his brother as dead. When he started being sent on public missions, he hid his distinctive heterochromia, choosing the green in memory of the pit that had given him and his brother life.
Danny, hiding his pit aura in the ocean's worth that was Amity park, took to blue, the colour that he and Damian were born with.
Damian moves to Gotham, and continues to mourn his brother as dead, right until one day when he is twelve, when he learns what the death of your other half truly feels like.
-
Their reunion is a thing of family legend. Violence runs hot in both bloodlines, ghosts are highly emotional and prone to fighting a the drop of a hat for bonding, playing, testing, every reason under the green sun. Their training and play often consisted of friendly spars, competitive spars, furious spars, venting spars. Both have been exposed to unhealthy amounts of ecto since before their birth.
There is a long, long minute of staring, before they rip themselves away and lunge at each other like wolves.
The bat family are horrified by their brutally efficient youngest suddenly barreling towards a clone (?) and trying to claw his throat open with his bare hands while openly sobbing.
It ends with them wrapped around each other crying into the others shoulder as their minds finally meet again and relax from the painful stretch for the first time in years.
Reading the novelization of A New Hope already changed how I saw Luke as a character but Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is going one step further and making me question the very fundamentals thought to be obvious about Luke.
Like, Luke is, for lack of a better term, a nerd. He studied languages and cultures -
“”Yes,” Luke admitted modestly. “I used to study a lot about certain worlds, back on my uncle’s farm on Tatooine. It was my only escape, and educational as well. This,” and he indicated the creature resting a massive long arm on his head and shaking him in a friendly fashion, “is a Yuzzem.””
-he wants to study more languages and cultures-
“Empty doorways beckoned to him and he was tempted, very tempted, to enter one of the ruined structures to find out if its interior was as well preserved as the outside.
This was not, he reminded himself firmly, the time for playful exploration. Their first concern was to find a way out, not to go poking around this ancient metropolis. However wonderful it was.”
Luke wants to know about people. He wants to know about cultures and creatures and he wants to be able to communicate and…
He really just. Is a great Jedi. He jumps between Leia and danger and he befriends the Yuzzem the prison guards thought would kill him and he wants to explore the creepy abandoned ruins of a civilization long past and he uses Anakin’s lightsaber underwater to cut the stem of a lilypad they use as a boat and he comments that the rock formations are almost too beautiful to cut down and he knows how to work Imperial explosives and
He’s a Jedi, man. He’s a Jedi. He’s been a Jedi this whole time, before any of us even knew what that actually meant.
the only reason people say that "mafuyu and tsukasa have nothing in common" when presented with mafukasa parallels is because they equate mafuyu and tsukasa being similar to "tsukasa has depression" because the fandom equates mafuyu's personality to being depressed and nothing else.
it doesn't help that people (primarily younger people in the fandom) who DO believe in mafukasa parallels end up making the mistake of portraying tsukasa as depressed because as of right now he is not (although it's possible he was in past because of his Very Unclear Middle School Backstory but that's irrelevant)
anyways, mafuyu and tsukasa are narrative foils because their core personalities are built off of the concept of wanting to make the people around them— especially their families— happy.
they both developed personalities at a young age based on someone they looked up to. for tsukasa, it was seiichi amami's performance that inspired him to be a star— a hero that could cheer anyone up. for mafuyu, it was her mother taking care of her that inspired her to be a nurse— and you can see the similarities from there.
for mafuyu, her identity would first come into conflict when her mother expressed her want for mafuyu to be a doctor— suddenly, "everyone's" happiness didn't match what she wanted to do, leaving her in a state of disorder and eventual depression.
for tsukasa, his identity was something he nearly forgot in its entirety at the start of the main story— becoming arrogant and fully absorbed in a hero persona, forgetting the kind person he truly is. furthermore, his current character arc seems to be foreshadowing that what "being a star" to him is going to be called into question— maybe it is something more than just being the main character that saves everyone.
their insecurities are incredibly similar.
in mafuyu's first mixed, mafuyu feels insecure towards ichika because unlike ichika, she feels as if her lyrics have no genuine meaning to be expressed to other people— despite them being her very real feelings. this is brought up again in her second mixed as well.
in tsukasa's third focus event, something similar happens. when watching seiichi's performance, he thinks that his acting is "real" and feels inferior towards him, which is ironic because tsukasa has been method acting this whole time. when tsukasa is acting out rio or bartlett or really anyone at this point in the story, it's not just those characters— it's a reflection of his traumas.
just like mafuyu, tsukasa undermines his passions he's poured his feelings into because someone else's work is more genuine in his eyes.
now, then, foils have many similarities and parallels (and i could honestly list a lot more), but how i define them is that they usually have some kind of major branching difference that MAKES them foils.
for mafuyu and tsukasa it's pretty straightforward.
mafuyu's people pleasing behavior comes from external expectations and pressures— her mother's demands.
tsukasa's people pleasing behavior comes internally, from himself— if he can't meet his own standards, if he can't be the perfect big brother or the perfect star, then he is nothing.
and even then, there's some overlap.
tsukasa's behavior was indirectly encouraged by his mother praising him for being a "good big brother" over the phone instead of asking him if he was okay while home alone.
mafuyu's terrified to be herself around other people because she doesn't want to worry or bother them— she doesn't want to be a burden— and projects her mother's expectations onto them, not realizing that they would prefer the real mafuyu if they knew the truth.
and the concept of mafukasa being foils is most perfectly and blatantly portrayed in these two cards.
mafuyu, the marionette, sitting limp on the floor— puppeteered by her mother's demands and donning a mask to hide her true self.
tsukasa, the jester, standing above everything else— puppeteering silenced plushies— his feelings. he's not being completely honest with himself, and he doesn't even realize it.
mafuyu has cut her strings and ripped her mask in half. she has acknowledged her true feelings and expressed them to her mother, even if she had to run away in the end.
a quick recolor set with lots of colors to choose from for your convenience! the original blinkie is the white one on the top left. I was going to make it a part of another lovecore set, but decided to do this instead!
Not a steddie!dads post believe it or not, but I was thinking about how S1-Steve conks the fuck out after sleeping w/Nancy (which was.......an interesting choice imo) but it got me thinking about what would happen if the same thing happened with Eddie.
Like, all the Upside Down shit is done and they're all healed up and, after pining for each other for ages, Steve and Eddie finally hook up.
It definitely wasn't a gooey, sappy, romantic love confession type of situation, more like the natural culmination of several agonizing months of sexual tension and trying to feel out what the other might be thinking and a pretty aggressive campaign of flirting on Eddie's part that he's certain Steve was matching him on toe-to-toe for at least most of and being badgered by their friends to pull their respective heads out of their respective asses — a glorified hook-up, really.
Yeah, there might have been an undercurrent of more in the way Steve had threaded their fingers together and the way he'd looked at him with those gorgeous hazel eyes of his and the way he'd kissed him like it fucking meant something, but there hadn't been a lot of words.
Eddie's a words kind of guy, believe it or not, and he'd really like to be looped into whatever the hell is going on inside Steve's perplexing brain, thanks, but no.
Instead, afterwards Steve had pulled Eddie into his arms, twined them tight around his waist and tangled their legs together and tucked his face into the curve of Eddie's shoulder, and that was...new, but in a matter of minutes he'd started softly snoring, and that — dozing off after a hook-up so the other can make a discreet exit — is a move Eddie knows intimately, not that knowing it makes it sting any less, because Eddie had thought Steve might be more, that this thing roiling beneath the surface of their friendship could be more than just a one-time thing.
It's actually kind of fucking horseshit, actually, that Steve is expecting Eddie to just leave like this had been nothing more than a chance to get laid, because Eddie knows it's more than that — not because he has good self-esteem or whatever, but because it's so obviously more than that.
The whole thing actually kind of bothers Eddie, and he's always been a petulant shit about things that bother him and he'd never cared too much about doing what he's "supposed to", or whatever, so...fuck it. He's tired and this rich-people mattress is way more comfortable than anything Eddie had slept on before, and Steve needs to grow a pair and face the music of this shit in the morning.
So instead of sliding out of Steve's grip like everyone who came before him, Eddie settles in and forces himself to fall asleep too.