#validate yourself

[asvospace]

[simplesteve]

Friendly reminder:

You don't need to be skinny or athletic to be sexy.

You don't need to be curvy or chubby to be sexy.

You do not have to be short or petite to be sexy.

There is no single definition of sexy. In fact everyone has a different idea of what makes someone sexy.

You do not have to fit someone else's ideals in order to be sexy, but you do have to accept that not everyone will find you sexy.

So how do you become sexy?

Find out what makes you FEEL sexy. Maybe it's wearing a certain fashion style. Maybe it's dressing in revealing clothing. Maybe it's dressing more conservatively. Maybe it's wearing makeup. Maybe it's no makeup. Maybe it's being pregnant. Maybe it's knowing you can't get pregnant. Maybe it's dancing. Maybe it's soaking up the sun.

Other people will label you as sexy based on their own likes and dislikes, but they're opinions are NOT facts and you should never internalize them that way.

The fact is you are sexy whenever you are FEELING sexy, so figure out what that is and embrace it. Experiment, try different things, have fun with it.

Become yourself and to hell with what anyone else thinks. Your validation is the only validation you need.

Never. Forget. Your Worth.

So tell me... What makes you FEEL sexy?

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[gordiicore]

[babykittenteach]

No but fr having an indigenous family broken up for its own good by the state and one of them leave her homeland to go get a Real Education is not just counter to the original story's characterization, it's not just erasing the colonialism commentary for the sake of failed feminism presumably based on the girlboss objection to portraying women as caretakers and the classist objection to blue collar jobs, it is an act of colonialism.

It is in fact so ridiculously an act of colonialism that it should come off as such to anybody able to think about media critically for a few moments, but to anybody familiar with what the US did to many indigenous peoples via the faux benevolence of boarding schools, including to native hawaiians, it's fucking revolting.

Like, shoutout to removing Pleakley's gender exploration, to removing the cop villain in lieu of just having the mad scientist remain one, to removing some of Cobra Bubbles's nuance, to removing commentary on race and colonialism, etc etc, but mainly: this did a colonialism.

[zorangezest]

switcheroo part 3 (starscream edition)

part 2

part 1

this was originally going to be included in part 2 as a short segment, but it was getting too long so they ended being posted separately!

why is this one high quality. why did I put so much effort into this. why have I drawn so much of this blucking au

[loveandthepsyche]

2024: There is another way…

[lamusedhermes]

Kind reminder that a degree will not get up one day and leave you, cheat on you, cut your funds, disrespect you or assault you. A degree will be worth a thousand sleepless nights and rivers of tears, because in the end it does matter more than anything else. A degree will make you an independent and undefeated woman, so stop belittling the importance of education nowadays. Every woman who studies is a woman who is ensuring a greater future for all women.

[spookyspeks]

Does anyone else feel like physically disabled people aren't allowed to identify with the very common and understandable thing of "nobody wants to work"

Like. "Nobody wants to work but if you're disabled you have to want to work or you must be faking. This thing everyone else feels isn't supposed to apply to you"

[slfcare]

2024 is about letting people care about and for you. it’s about answering ‘how are you’ with honesty, asking for space when needed, accepting help and being open to advice, listening to concerns and having difficult conversations. it’s about trying your very best to let go of the feeling that you’re completely alone, and finding ways to prove to yourself that you aren’t.

[perdamian]

hey guys… we all know that it’s okay for mithrun to have a caretaker for the rest of his life, right? that even after he heals and potentially regains his desires he will probably still need support?? that the goal of healing is not to become a “normal person”, but to build skills to navigate the world in a way that accommodates your disability??? that relying on the people around you is not a failure, but proof of your desire to live????

[asvospace]

[vaguely-concerned]

My two cents on how much of Mind!Varric is Rook’s mind trying to fill the blank space and how much is Solas actively talking through a convenient blood magic paper doll of the mind: I think it's a mix of both, a truly collaborative psychosocial horrorshow if you would, but waaaay more towards the second. It feels too directed and tactical at times to be anything else. Rook's mind is willing to go along with the denial phase as far as it can fucking carry them to not have to face the grief and regret and does its part in papering over details that don’t make any sense, the way brains will strive to create coherent meaning even out of deeply confusing input, but to my understanding it's a collaborateur in how that plays out, not the instigator or control center. Solas is using it as a path to agency and to gather insight into Rook as a person unguarded as he can't count on in his own guise. (That stoic option that leads to him being like 'oh I see you're cautiously denying me access to your inner life. well. at least you still have Varric to talk to. y'know as an outlet :)'. You absolute BITCH Solas! That alone convinced me that he HAS to have an active hand in it on some level.)

My guess is that it takes considerable effort on Solas’ part to make Mind!Varric do anything more involved or complicated than seeming to sit up in bed and give casual commentary, and that’s why he keeps having eerie five minute shallow pep talks with you before he announces he conveniently needs a nap aaanyway good luck kid you got this haha. When he’s just spouting NPC lines from his bedrest, I’m ready to believe that could be Rook’s mind being allowed to improv lines for him more freely because it’s less about Solas trying to get something out of them or working an angle and more ‘Still here! Still totally alive and fine and the mentor figure you know and love and trust :) don’t even worry about it! Thankfully there is no war in Ba Sing Sei, as we all know’ upkeep work lol. Rook’s mind is allowed to set the tone of Varric, the outlines, but not always the content. 

AND, on a (beautifully fucked up) character psychology level, I feel like Solas is indulging in actually getting to be the good supportive mentor figure to Rook with one hand to assuage the guilt he feels about what he's done -- and what he's going to do -- to them with the other. Same internal logic as he uses in Trespasser about the Qun. ‘Almost everyone is going to die from the course of action I’m doggedly pursuing eventually. But at least I can make their last years happier and freer and kinder than they would have been otherwise. and that kind of makes up for it right. a little bit. doesn't it. doesn't that make it better at least. I need that to make it better)'. Did I really take your beloved mentor and friend from you if you don’t know yet that I did? Some philosophers would argue not really! So it’s probably almost ok actually. Isn’t it even a little noble that I’m taking all this grief and guilt on myself and shielding you for now. With undertones that I’m not sure he would realize himself (and might be mortified by if he did) that he is so incredibly lonely, and even a dishonest and indirect emotional connection is more than nothing when you’re that desperate. In this setup he gets idk. Both the control he craves so incredibly badly in relationships and over himself, and the scraps, the fading afterimages, of intimacy and warmth and companionship, even second hand. The one thing Solas and Rook agree on deep deep down is that they really wish Varric weren't gone. They're handshake memeing this in the saddest and most creepy way possible.

I think an important element too is that Solas needs Rook and their team to *succeed* —  up to a certain point. He needs someone to hold the two other elven mean girls off until he can get out of here. Ideally, in a perfect world, even do all the hard work of killing them so he can swoop in at the end and do his thing when both sides are exhausted and out of resources to stop him, and then Bob’s your uncle! Same logic as he was using with Corypheus, and after that worked out so well, too! King of choosing to never learn from a single solitary mistake he’s ever made even though i fully believe he could have the capacity to Fen’Harel <3 The underlying idea isn’t flawed, you see, it was just unforeseen circumstances getting in the way. This time for sure it’ll all work out the way I cleverly imagined it in my head beforehand. Cue By Talos this can’t be happening etc. in the form of a statue almost crushing him like a bug. 

So he's providing guidance and forging Rook into a leader from two angles: one Rook might not trust, and one they probably will. Shaping them into what he needs slowly and carefully. He’s helping you hone your team into their most effective state, as he might have done with his own agents back in the day, setting up his chess pieces even if he has to squint through two glimpsed realities to do it haha. Pincer maneuver of an insidious stealth mentor you never asked for. Also… at one point mind Varric gives you a whole little monologue about how Solas' problem is that he’s always seen his interpersonal connections as flaws and see where it’s landed him, all alone and the worst part? it hasn’t even worked. it’s all been for nothing he’s back where he began with nothing to show for it but his mistakes. Like...that has such strong 'uh okay happy to play your therapist from two rooms away here what the fuck kind of traumadump is this' energy to me, I’m not sure Rook like. Thinks that much about Solas as a private person. So much of Solas' self-loathing and futile insights into his own flaws seem to shine through in Mind!Varric's dialogue all the time �� I just can't believe that there's no guiding hand behind it as it were. 

Most of all. I feel like people underestimate the degree to which Solas is incredibly funny. As in, he has a very consistent and recognizable sense of humour. It’s one of my very favourite things about him. We must remember — it is crucial that we always keep in mind — Orlesian accent and wig Solas from May The Dread Wolf Take You (my beloved, the explanation for why I love this dude even with the. All of the everything else. No one does it quite like him). He is not at all above doing things or adding little flourishes for his own obscure amusement, in fact that seems to me to be one of his most consistent traits. The Randy Dowager Quarterly comment Varric has? The ‘Maybe this is the Dread Wolf’s revenge. Forcing us to house sit for him’ thing? To Me this is 100% Solas amusing himself in his boring Fade jail surrounded by the screaming hellscape of all his regrets. Source: it came to me as divine revelation through pure vibes trust me bro 

If nothing else I find it much more narratively interesting personally if the connection between Rook and Solas really is that defenselessly intimate and entwined (and so unbalanced!), and the sense of violation and invasion and betrayal afterwards consequently all the more nauseatingly intense. Even if you kept him at arm’s length in the open, he’s been under your skin the whole time, looking around, gathering what he needs to destroy you, wearing the face of a friend. Regretfully, probably, but choosing to do it every step of the way anyway. (Sound familiar, Inquisitor? Solas doesn’t have that many tricks when you actually look at it, he keeps returning to old tried and true ones like a dog with a bone haha.) Maybe he even genuinely meant some of it as mercy, which only makes it so much worse. It makes his sin against his own core principles of autonomy and the freedom of all beings in mind, spirit and body so much more juicily grave if it’s something he pursues actively and consistently, rather than it half-falling into his lap as a happy accident mainly orchestrated by Rook’s own subconscious. Solas, too, is at his very lowest point, the closest to giving in and becoming his own antithesis fully that he’s ever been, and it makes the choice of whether you still reach out your hand to him one last time or not all the more impactful and difficult.

[thepeacefulgarden]

This holiday season...

You are allowed to say "No."

You are allowed to cancel plans.

You are allowed to leave the table.

You are allowed to excuse yourself and take some time to regroup from Sensory Hell (tm).

You are allowed to not answer nosy or judgmental questions.

You are allowed to (discreetly) regift.

You are allowed to give gifts only to immediate family, or only to children.

You are allowed to have a quiet and subdued holiday.

You are allowed to do as much or as little decorating as you desire.

You are allowed to do less.

You are allowed to ask for help, and to (graciously) accept help.

You are allowed to give experiences rather than things.

You are allowed to grieve.

You are allowed to disappoint people, and to let their disappointment be their issue to deal with, not yours.

You are allowed to scrap traditions that don't resonate with you, or that leave you exhausted, burned out, broke, etc.

You are allowed to start new traditions, or to lean into traditions that are meaningful to you.

You are allowed to have fats and carbs.

You are allowed to enjoy delicious food, guilt-free.

You are allowed to have seconds.

You are allowed to set boundaries with your loved ones.

You are allowed to change the subject.

You are allowed to spend the holidays with people other than your family of origin.

You are allowed to dislike your family.

You are allowed to take care of yourself, and make your needs a priority.

You are allowed to ignore the naysayers and critics.

You are allowed to feel anything, and acknowledge your feelings.

[c4fin4t3d-f1sh]

Reminder not to stereotype kintypes.

Just because one is a fox does not mean they're as happy and playful as one.

Just because one is a rabbit does not mean they're a cute, cuddly, soft bunny.

Just because one is a bird does not mean they're sad to be earth-bound.

Just because one is a wolf does not mean they have "two sides/personalities" while shifting.

Just because one is a cat does not mean they are faking alterhumanity, or in their "Warrior Cat phase"

Just because one is a nonhuman does not mean that we do quads.

Just because one is a nonhuman does not mean we have gear.

Just because one is a nonhuman does not mean we are lean, strong, and Caucasian.

Just because one is a nonhuman does not mean we express our alterhumanity in eccentric ways.

Every nonhuman is valid as fuck. From the smallest mouse, to the largest whale, everything in between, you are valid.

[galactic-rhea]

I'm forever obsessed by the big contrast that is that Anakin is universally percieved like a dog or a dragon (for obvious reasons, it fits him!), obviously I mostly mean by the fandom, but in-universe there's lots of dragon comparisons.

But Padmé is the only character ever to compare him to an animal (a feline) that's universally considered as very independent, stealthy and regal, and like it is so jarring and out of the blue after being sold into the dragon-dog agenda that at first it doesn't make sense, but then again Padmé's the character that knew Anakin the most and it was Anakin's only relationship with not strange power dynamics attached to it and I think there's some beautiful and a very interesting comment to make about it.

something something in a world where everyone sees you as a weapon something something even you see yourself as a monster under a leash something something i see you as a dangerous beautiful creature forever hunted and misunderstood something something