#very mentally ill about this

[wheelercore]

This oedipus post is going to take so damn long to write i can already tell

[dryya-doesnt]

Father-daughter dance ‼️‼️

[inkskinned]

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?"

[dead-core]

part of knowing me is watching me self-destruct. you cannot save me, you cannot fix me, and you cannot stop me.

[hoofpeet]

yo, if ur lavingo brain worm isnt gone yet can u draw more of them??? i jus saw ur lavingo stuff and its my new fav ship, u draw them so awesome its insane 2 me...

HEEHEE here's 1 thang from an old sketchpage...

[obsob]

here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud!!

✷(print shop)✷

[kalichi09]

part 2 of this

[caeslxys]

inhales. imogen is such an amalgamation of so many different cr villains thematically and in her motivations that the most profound difference between them is very simply that she wants and therefore chooses to be good and kind at every turn.

she is delilah's love and ludinus' wrath and lucien's increasingly blind desire for power and liliana's fear and otohan's purpose and she is none of those things at all. THE most character of all time. exhales

[oneday-yourside]

Being released into the wild after a lifetime in captivity

[stil-lindigo]

the dredger.

a comic about closure.

(buy the digital copy of the comic anthology here)

creative notes:

[commander-gloryforge]

fellow guild wars 2 enjoyers that arent popular and part of the cool kids and have ocs that everyone knows/loves and create banger fanart and post really good fics and all that

fellow guild wars 2 enjoyers that are just kinda there and kinda average

lets band together. and maybe kiss.

[paint-it-dead]

-"Start Here" by Caitlyn Siehl

[gayvampyr]

“queer spaces should be inclusive of people who don’t enjoy sex and who have “strange”, negative or repulsed relationships with sex” and “sex is an important aspect of lgbt community, history, and activism and queer people should be allowed and able to talk freely about sex without stigma or shame” are ideas that can and should coexist.

[inkskinned]

for a second, you did the bad thing and bargained about it.

if it meant that you would never be numb like this again, what would you give up?

maybe it's the childhood stuff or the religious trauma or how your dad doesn't believe in medication, but this is how you are, right. you need to have a counterbalance. suffering has to have its own reward. there needs to be a point to it. and if you're happy - if you could just be happy, and the world could actually fill in enough space that the edges of your spirit actually meet the horizon of your body - you would need to pay for it.

your passions? that one seems fair, but how could you actually be happy without them. well, you'd never be numb again, so maybe you'd be able to find joy in the small things like you used to. gleeful, you'd make coffee and breakfast into an artform. you'd find a way to make it make sense, somehow. you'd move on. it'd be different, but it would be doable.

your lover? your friends? this would be hard. you owe so much to your community. still, you could maybe make yourself a small home in the woods. you could live a quiet life, one devoid of friendship - but also without this horrible grey mist. a life like bigfoot, then. you'd figure out how to make the most of it.

your hair. your teeth. all of it.

sometimes you are jealous of mental illness as it appears in media: a big stroke of a meltdown, a firestorm that resolves prettily in therapy. it is flashing lights and thin teenagers. you've absolutely had breakdowns that stole the show - but life after resolved into a pixel art of things you managed to piece together afterwards, not a tapestry of a heart made suddenly-beautiful. that people could pick up blades as if they weigh nothing, that the way it all appears is as a cry for help, not a slow backsliding.

you have to stop the thought: i'd give up everything.

but also - be real. you'd never give up your dog. nor your best friend. nor the way you feel walking while through deep fog. you'd never give up the last bonfire of summer, the reckless laughter of halloween. so you do still love things.

maybe that's the problem: you know it should be easier. you have everything you could possibly want. so how come you are still trapped? still yearning?

[mod2amaryllis]

goddd on second nope viewing the moment that hit hardest was the "i see you" between em and oj during the final confrontation, because it finally made me realize the BRIGHTside of spectacle this movie presents.

the horror of nope is about the darkness of spectacle, our addiction to it, the way it leads to exploitation. but such a huge pervasive aspect of humanity isn't gonna be a black and white evil. deep down, so so many of us want, even NEED, to just be seen. for the stuff that disappoints us, the stuff we're proud of, the stuff we share with the people we love. we don't always need the crowd, we don't need ALL eyes on us, yet we're moving into a world and culture that claims we need as many eyes on us as possible at all times. surveillance, influencers, social media, forever exponentially growing spectacle. OJ and Em are bound by that world, struggling to work in Hollywood. the whole motivation of getting the Oprah shot is to save their father's business.

but in the end, when it was really looking like they might lose each other and make all their work pointless, they weren't reaching for a camera. they weren't looking at the absolute, unprecedented spectacle that separated them. they looked at each other. nobody else got to see that moment of determination. just them.

i think sometimes we are spectacles to each other on a micro level. we want to be seen, and it doesn't have to be by the world. we just need the eyes that matter.

[jeiyuuen]

Honestly, how am I supposed to live normally with the knowledge that Luffy's flower is sunflower while Law's is Queen of the Night?