#thinking abt this a lot lately

[disteal]

I think the best advice I ever got to stop myself from getting in my head over issues i was having with a partner/friend was “Are you deciding on ultimatums in your relationship without the other persons knowledge or consent? Are you having conversations in your head where the other party is a projection you supply the responses for? If so; you have done this person a huge disservice in not allowing them to answer on their own terms. You have done so much architecture around this problem in your mind that is impenetrable for anyone who was not there when it was being built.”

That shit really changed my life and honestly? I think made me a nicer person to be around.

[taxinealkaloids]

behold hitherto unposted htn doodles! harrow+her terrible mentor, harrow+her terrible roommate

[disappeareddraws]

(text post source)

just a regular convo on the battle subway

[puppyeared]

doodles of my fav sillies

anton belongs to @poicyss

[biracy]

Once u learn to be critical of rhetoric that relies on associating [supposed bad thing] with some form of psychological and/or neurological "damage", u really notice just how prevalent it is on here. Everyone you don't like is delusional, they're insane, they have brain damage, they need to Check The Carbon Monoxide Detectors, they need to Get Help and Go To Therapy, [form of media and/or communication] is literally brain poison, they've had their attention spans destroyed, they're "small brain" or "smooth brain" or "brain dead" or whatever. So many people on here remain seemingly incapable of criticizing someone's actions or views without needing to insinuate that the "problem" is neurological, "in the brain", unchangeable, fundamental. I should not have to explain why it is insensitive, nonconstructive, and oftentimes straight-up ableist to tell someone that they must have "brain damage" because you got into an argument with them online.

[mattodore]

20s vs 30s

[grendelsmilf]

i still find it so interesting how jackie is (was?) largely defined by her niceness, her friendliness. she's not the strongest, or the smartest, but she can bring people together. so when she is mean to the other girls, you notice it. she's mean to taissa when she feels like her position as leader is undermined; she knows that taissa is just as much of their leader as she is and it scares her. she's mean to shauna when she finds out about jeff; understandable considering what a huge betrayal it is (at least on the surface). but the girl she is by far the meanest to is nat.

and there is no good reason why anyone should be mean to nat. she is kind of treated as a punching bag, and taissa especially resents her because she doesn't like the idea of nat threatening the team's performance with her day-drinking or whatever. but nat is by far the kindest, sweetest, most compassionate, genuine member of the team. even as an adult you can see that she might be jaded and grieving and ruthless, but she's still at her core a good person. young natalie especially though is someone with a very strong moral center and uses those guiding principles of kindness to define who she is.

she's more mature, capable, and sure of herself than the rest of the group, because before ever landing in that forest, she's had a much harder life than the rest of them. we see that van probably doesn't have the best home life, but the rest of them are living comfortably. even if they don't have great relationships with their parents, they still live in middle to upper class households. nat grew up in a trailer park with a father who horribly abused her and her mother (until the day she witnessed him accidentally shoot his own face off). these circumstances made nat more resilient, braver, and more empathetic than the other girls.

and i think jackie recognizes that, whether or not it's a conscious recognition. she knows that nat is everything she herself is not. nat is confident in herself whereas jackie is terribly insecure and relies on external validation to uphold her own identity. where nat comes from poverty, jackie grew up in a huge house. where nat is comfortable having sex with boys, jackie is too repressed to have sex with her longterm boyfriend because she's terrified of having to confront the fact that she won't actually like it. natalie expresses herself through alt/grunge fashion, music, and culture, whereas jackie is as preppy as it is physically possible to be. natalie is jackie's perfect opposite: a poor outcast who is nevertheless comfortable enough in her own (hetero)sexuality to present in a (gender) non-conforming way and not care what others think of her to jackie's rich popular prom queen soccer captain who is debilitatingly insecure and sexually repressed, conforming perfectly to society's expectations of her to the point that she'd rather die than explore the possibility that she might like girls.

jackie has negative interest in travis, but she breaks him and nat up and steals him from her anyway. and the thing is, nat doesn't even care. she forgives jackie. when lottie locks jackie in the closet (ha), nat is the one who comes to her rescue. when travis apologizes to nat for sleeping with jackie, she says it doesn't matter to her. jackie is horrible to nat, but nat is genuinely mature enough that it doesn't even bother her. jackie wears her insecurities on her sleeve, and nat sees right through her. she doesn't put up with jackie's bullshit, but she's also gracious enough to not gang up on jackie with the rest of the girls, even though she's the only one who actually has any right to be mad at her. nat is generally apart from the rest of the team, not only because she's an outcast, but because she's simply above their petty dramas.

jackie doesn't have a good reason to be mean to her. she's the kindest, sweetest girl on the team. but jackie is mean when she feels threatened, and nat's existence threatens her very identity.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

:-P

[s0lairee]

endearments.

getting this out before his listener gets a canon nickname. the idea of lasko looking up suitable endearments is... endearing (ha)

(transcript for the nicknames in the second panel: baby, babe, darling, gorgeous, dear(?), love (maybe), raincloud.)

[nekropsii]

Gentle reminder that Homestuck is in fact intended for people who are 18 or older — particularly the grungy little forum-dwelling 20-somethings Hussie was largely associated with on the MSPAForums — and was made in 2009. The adult and offensive content is a natural extension of this. The offensive parts of the writing — such as the racism — are not excused by the time period and where it was made and who it was made for, but it is explained by it.

Another gentle reminder that every time Hussie depicted predatory/abusive dynamics or pedophilic age gaps in Homestuck, he was depicting them as bad and disgusting things, including when his avatar (who is not fully representative of himself and is, in fact, a character) was creeping on Vriska. You are supposed to be uncomfortable about it. That is the intention. Same goes for when incest was touched upon — it is consistently portrayed as bad and disgusting. You are supposed to be uncomfortable about it. That is the intention.

Younger people are technically “allowed” to like it in the sense that while it is intended for mature audiences, it is not inherently pornographic, and was not and still isn’t age gated. Just understand the content wasn’t exactly made with it being read by 15 year olds in mind. Also understand that there is a lot of nuance to things all of the time, and Hussie didn’t shy away from taboo topics on the basis of having expected all of his audience to be in their 20s in 2009 and know him personally.

There’s some legitimately bad stuff in Homestuck that is worth criticism — such as the racism — but Hussie touching on abuse, or making jokes about how incest/pedophilia are fucking gross is not really one of them. He did not condone that. He just wrote about it being deplorable, and mentioned it a lot because… Well, it was 2009, and a big part of Homestuck is “bad things happening to kids.”

[claraoswalds]

STRANGER THINGS LADIES APPRECIATION WEEK ↳ Day 5: Favorite Quote

Maybe Jonathan's right. To be honest, I wasn't thinking about him. I wasn't thinking about anyone, really. I just... I wanted to be right. I wanted to be right so badly. And were you? I thought so. But maybe I just... don't want to admit that I'm wrong, because if I'm wrong, then... You're what everyone thinks you are. Just a kid who has no idea what she's doing. It's not easy out there, Nance. I know.

[saturnsuv]

happy you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn't paint it very well wednesday

[peachpitss]

love drakengard fans. we’re like the drakengard series burned my crops and poisoned my water supply. i love drakengard. you should never play it.

[danlarussc]

Tory & Sam | 5.10

[biracy]

I can't remember if I've posted abt this before but regardless: I'm sorry but I really and truly cannot get behind the idea that there is any wide-scale societal "pressure for trans men to be feminine" or "to be twinks" or whatever. You are either conflating a very small online community's beauty standard (usually some kind of transmasc pseudo-appropriation of "femboy" aesthetics, which yes, are often Bad and regressive and fetishized and etc.) with Mainstream Society, or confusing society not wanting trans men to transition with "wanting trans men to be feminine", which are certainly not the same thing. Ultimately if a cis person believes there is any validity to the concept of being trans (i.e. not a Posie Parker-esque "there's no such thing as a trans person" type), they are more likely to think that trans men should be like as masc and buff and hairy as possible or whatever bc that's what cis people think men look like and it's easier for a lot of people to recognize someone who Looks Masc as a man. It is difficult sometimes to see derision of trans guys who are Too Feminine and Not Hairy Enough or whatever (which is not always something someone has control over btw) as anything but "this is Skye who I think is a confused little girl because Skye does not pass" slightly restyled for 2023 "filthcore fagdykes" or whatever lol