#needed to do something today

[rakiah]

I’ll decide of my Happy Ending.

[badolmen]

WARNING 18+

19

[bacchuschucklefuck]

couldnt draw my thang for mid-autumn so treated myself to a calne redesign instead

[fudgecake-charlie]

beloved friend sent me one of scar's newer tweets and i HAD to draw it

[tzarrz]

i listen to fog lake too much

[reineydraws]

who's that guy smiling so nice and polite? cant be the hawkeyes mihawk, can it?! (it's not. 😂)

realized i can post the sketch dump in two different posts lol here's the first few of the cont'd mishanks body swap doods ✌️

mihawk would probably scold shanks for not grooming the beard correctly and insist on doing it himself haha. shanks would have a crisis from the proximity. mihawk would just be annoyed to find it's more difficult to shave from the third person.

part 2 of this sketch dump!

[hinamie]

色彩 [Shikisai]

[untitledgoosegay]

re last reblog I do see fanfic culture pushing/replicating a certain model of "what trauma looks like," "how trauma works"

this is a problem across all areas of society obviously, but transformative works are, well, transformative. they're about crafting and modifying narratives where the fan-creator sees a flaw or a lack -- often for the better! don't get me wrong, I've done my fair share of "I take a hammer and I fix the canon," it's the main thing that gets my creative gears spinning -- but what happens when that "flaw" is simply a narrative not conforming to popular expectations?

some people just don't get PTSD from events that sound obviously traumatic. they're not masking, and they're not coping; they just straight-up didn't get the permanently-locked stress-response that defines PTSD. they walk away from a horrible experience going "well, that sucked, but it's over now." some people do get PTSD from events most people wouldn't find traumatic. we don't really know why some people get PTSD and others don't. but fandom has an idea of events that must be traumatizing, of a "correct" way to portray trauma. you see the problems with this lack of understanding in e.g. fans pressuring the devs of Baldur's Gate 3 to add dialogue where the player character badgers Halsin about his own feelings on his abuse -- because he must be traumatized, and his trauma must fit a certain mold and presentation of sexual trauma, under the mistaken impression that anything outside that narrow window is somehow "wrong" and disrespectful or even harmful to survivors.

take, for another example, the very common trope of a traumatized character who hates touch or sex "learning" to like touch or sex as a part of their healing process. certainly that can be healing for some people; other people will never like, or want, touch or sex, because of trauma or because they just don't. the assumption that someone who doesn't want sex or doesn't like to be touched must be traumatized, must be suffering from this perceived lack, is seriously harmful -- to asexual people, to people with sensory issues around touch, and to people for whom healing from trauma means freedom to refuse sex or touch.

and there's a secondary trope, one that's slightly more thoughtful but ultimately repeats the problem -- that once someone has learned that their boundaries will be respected, they'll feel it's safe to soften those boundaries. once they feel safe refusing touch or sex, they'll feel comfortable allowing it on their own terms. but many people don't, and many people won't! many people will simply never want to be touched, and never want sex, and they are not suffering or broken or lacking because of it. the idea that proving you'll respect someone's boundaries entitles you to test those boundaries -- the paradox is obvious, and yet this is something i've seen hurt (re-traumatize) people i care for.

people are imperfect victims. people don't heal in the ways you expect. many people have positive memories of their abuse, of their abusers. many people hurt others in the course of their trauma, in ways that can't easily be unpacked in a 5k oneshot. very few narratives of trauma and recovery actually fit the ones put forward by popular children's media and romance novels -- which are the ones I most see replicated in fandom spaces, because they provide the clearest narrative and easiest catharsis, and so they're easy and soothing to reach for.

that's not necessarily a bad thing! i am not immune to goopy romance tropes. i am not immune to teary catharsis. not every fic has to grapple with ugly realities. but there's a problem when these narratives become predominant, when people think they're accurate and realistic depictions of trauma, when the truth of trauma is unpleasant and uncomfortable, and doesn't fit any single narrative, let alone one of comforting catharsis

[weirdglassthing]

ouaw doodle dump!!

[bixels]

This Twitter MLP human redesign drama is a mess, leave me the fuck out of it.

[squipdop]

babe / theres something wretched about this / something so precious about this / where to begin babe / theres something broken about this / but i might be hoping about this / oh what a sin

hello ive been turning them over and over and over again in my mind. i might be unwell. [id under the cut | reference ]

[image description: two drawings of astarion and gale from baldurs gate 3 hugging. the one on the upper right side has gale starting the hug, with one arm visibly around astarion, leaning his head into his shoulder. astarion has one arm around gale, the other hand still hovering over his back. his eyes are open and he is not yet leaning in, somewhat aprehensive. the drawing on the lower left is similar to the first one, but this time astarion is also leaning into the hug, with his face smushed against gales shoulder and his eyes closed. next to the drawings are two crops of the lyrics to hoziers from eden, reading "babe / theres something tragic about you / something so magic about you / dont you agree" and "babe / theres something lonesome about you / something so wholesome about you / get closer to me". the whole image is colored in soft greys of yellow and blue hues. end image description]

[trans-androgyne]

I love you, transmascs, with all my heart. I want to see you love yourselves. Your masculinity, your trans and queer masculinity, is beautiful and should be celebrated. You don’t have to be invisible and you don’t have to punish yourself for being a man or masc. Talk about yourself, talk about your experiences, be loud, take up space. Turn your body into a home in whatever form that looks like for you. You deserve safety and comfort, you deserve community and belonging. Surround yourself with people who will give that to you and don’t you dare settle for less. Remember that you’re a human too—your first responsibility is to yourself before you can help others. Take care of yourselves and each other out there. I love you.

[golyadkin]

it's probably fine. it's probably happened before.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Person with no whimsy: Why are you trying to trick g-d with loopholes? 🙄🙄🙄🙄

[fantastic-nonsense]

I need DC to start using Two-Face more because I need a writer who thinks exploring how Bruce and Harvey's friendship was impacted by Harvey beating Dick half to death with a baseball bat as a 10-year-old is worth doing.

We've had multiple explorations of the Bruce-Harvey friendship & how it survives Two-Face's existence, and we've had several stories address Dick's lingering trauma from Two-Face's beating, but never how BRUCE dealt with Robin: Year One re: his interactions with both of them.

I need an answer for Bruce putting a reformed Harvey in charge of Gotham during 52/One Year Later over literally anyone else when that beating had been canon since the 90s and Robin: Year One had come out less than 5 years before but I'm never going to get it because DC is too obsessed with putting out stories about the clown man to do actual character development

[odetojupiter]

so, we know that abuse and victim responses to abuse are very central to aftg, but what i find interesting is how other characters respond to the victim’s reactions, especially when it comes to mourning their abuser. there’s something about kevin mourning riko, aaron mourning tilda, neil mourning mary, andrew mourning cass, thats so important to me because it really truly highlights how even when people are united through similar traumas, the differences in their situations makes it impossible to fully understand the relationship a person has to their abuser. neil, aaron, and andrew are united through the abuse, neglect, or - what the fuck is the word i’m thinking of? permit? condone? i mean, knowingly allowing it to happen and not intervening - stemming from a maternal figure. but neil can’t understand why andrew would hold on to cass for so long - he refused to let her go until aaron came into the picture. and andrew can’t understand why aaron would mourn for tilda, potentially viewing aaron’s grief as a betrayal of their promise. and they all ridicule kevin for his reactions to riko. of course, neil and andrew are also abused by riko, but they still can’t understand the complicated relationship between kevin and riko because, at the end of the day, they just weren’t there.

i mean this is primarily an observation but i really love how trauma and trauma response is depicted as nuanced, complex and overall just difficult to understand from an outsider perspective in the books. it reads as really real, and though it can be frustrating when a character doesn’t understand a different character’s response, you have to understand that their perception of said character’s response is warped by their own experience of abuse.

andrew bounced from home to home, never had stability, so obviously he held tight on to the first mother-figure that didn’t outright hurt him. his self-worth was probably low enough that he thought living with drake was a fine price to pay to keep cass.

neil only ever had his mother, and he’d willingly accept her harsh hands because he believed she was just keeping him safe from the very real dangers that were closing in on them.

aaron was dealing with an addiction, and so was his mother; he was equally dependent on her to avoid withdrawal as he was scared of her anger.

i don’t really have a point anymore but you get what i’m saying