you were raised in comparison.

it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.

you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.

you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.

what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.

it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.

you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.

you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?

a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.

you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.

it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.

something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.

The Curse Of Hope

_

Danny is in another universe. He had a reason, but he doesn’t remember anymore. He can only stare, horrified and disgusted, at the sickest city spirit he’s ever seen. Shivering and swaying with every step, core exposed, and ectoplasm leaking from wounds that are decades old. A ratty blanket was thrown over their shoulders, barely hiding the spirit’s pale grey skin and protruding black bones.

The spirit didn’t even sense him until he reached out to touch its wispy shoulders. The spirit flinched, clutching at the dozens of trinkets hanging from their neck and tucking in on themselves like they were expecting a blow.

“Oh, shit,” He swore, floating back a few feet, hands in the air, to show he meant no harm. “I’m sorry. I promise, I’m not here to steal from you.” The spirit shivered again and rolled a pearl necklace in between their fingers. A nervous habit. “Uh, I like that pocket watch? It’s very nice.”

That got their attention. They peeked at Danny, and he saw that more tattered cloth was covering their eyes, blending in with the stringy hair that reached the ground. Their blanket fluttered weakly, revealing hundreds of thousands of tiny marks etched into their skin. Scars, really. Scars that wrote out curse after curse onto the spirit’s very being. They burned with evil intent, and even reached inside the spirit’s body and wrapped around their core.

Occasionally, blinding specks of color raced across their body, temporarily erasing the writing, but it always returned quickly. He watched, a little detached, as one particular line rewrote itself across their rough forearm, drawing fresh ectoplasm like someone was writing it with a thin knife.

“Are you…alright?” Danny stuttered. A stupid question.

The spirit cocked its head. He couldn’t see their eyes, but he felt their burning gaze as they pondered the question.

“The pain of others becomes mine own.” They rasped. “The lights of the city dim as rotten wealth clogs mine veins. Magicks long forgotten have eaten mine skins, pulled mine cloak, and darkened mine skies. Helios has refused to grace mine doorstep, and the seasons of the Earth have revoked their kindness.”

Danny held his breath. It felt like he was the one with the exposed core, not the spirit.

The spirit shivered once more. “Tell mine soul, little lamb. How could this Forsaken City know peace, when it was long since ripped from mine hands?”

Shit, he needed Frostbite. And maybe Clockwork. Now.

-Or-

Danny meets the spirit of Gotham City. The villains and rogues that have plagued the city for decades are literal curses that are taking quite the toll on Gotham, and honestly, Danny isn’t sure how much longer they can hold out. The heroes seem to be doing some help, and are probably the reason Gotham made it this far, but the poor city needs help from the Realms if they want to get better.

Luckily, Danny can provide that help.

But only if he could get Gotham to leave their city behind. Because recovery is going to take a very long time.

ngl the "im white so i dont talk abt any characters' race ever bc im afraid of accidentally saying something racist" approach to fandom is like. very weak. imo.

like first of all: i get that "i dont incorporate race into my media analysis because i'm afraid of messing up" comes from a different place than "i don't incorporate race into my media analysis because I Don't See Race 😊 there is only The Human Race." but it has the same functional effect, right? that effect being that your analysis of [INSERT MEDIA HERE] ignores the very real way that race impacts people.

second of all: it feels kinda lazy! like ur saying "i dont know enough abt race to feel comfortable commenting on how race affects this show and i dont care enough to learn." the only way to become more comfortable discussing race is to actually practice discussing race. but when i see people saying this it feels like they're saying "i'm white, which means i don't know how to talk about race, and i don't have to know how to talk about race, and i don't ever have to know how to talk about race, so i'm choosing to never learn how to talk about race."

third of all: just because you don't openly talk about race doesn't mean you're any less likely to accidentally say or do something racist. implicit biases run deep, y'all. it's probably already there in your interpretation of the show. but the "i don't want to accidentally say something racist" implies that you are positive that your interpretation of the show isn't racist. and i'm not saying you're wrong. but i'm saying that if a person of color tells you that something you said about [INSERT MEDIA HERE] was racist, you better be prepared to actually listen and not just brush them off because "i can't be racist! i purposefully never talk about race just to make sure i'm not racist!"

which brings me to my final point: if you do accidentally say something racist... literally just apologize. if someone says you've been doing something racist, apologize and stop doing that thing. it's literally not that hard. i've done it. i've seen other people do it. "i'm scared of being called racist!" is such a weak excuse im tired of it. getting called racist is not the end of the fucking world. calm the fuck down and grow a spine. jesus.

I feel ill. All the fools and villains who ever fell for my ploys, they're — they're here!

glorioso from last years twitterin

shout-out to the makers of NBC Hannibal for (clearly) reading all four books about Hannibal Lecter by Thomas Harris and going "hmm. actually we will make the gayest possible version of this" going on to COMPLETELY disregard the other main character and (canon) ?love interest? of the series and never even MENTION Clarice Starling. Like it's so funny to me that she never even appears on the show when book!Will Graham literally fucks off after The Red Dragon and wants nothing to do with any of this anymore and book!Hannibal is obsessed with Clarice in the same way that tv!Hannibal is obsessed with tv!Will. like they really took a whole book franchise, picked out the cherries, and made it their own personal little gay AU. that's so refreshing and should be a leading example in television adaptations. in this essay i will

I’m back with more slightly disturbing thoughts about transformers.

Ok listen.

I think cybertronians should be more freaked out by the fact humans eat other living things.

Like come on, bots only ingest energon which is inanimate crystal juice, they’re regularly grossed out by normal organic functions, and you’re telling me they don’t bat at eye at the idea of their friendly little Sentient companions straight up killing other animals and eating them??? I feel like that should def cause more cognitive dissonance for them, esp autobots since they actually get close to humans.

Like I can see them being grossed out but accepting of the fact that wild animals eat each other- they are WILD animals and all, not exactly sentient or even necessarily intelligent after all. But HUMANS? The organic creatures that are the closest to them (going by tfp standards where they don’t mention many other organic species) in terms of structure and emotion and intelligence?? That has to be concerning on some level to them.

Referencing tfp and MTMTE where they have scraplets and sparkeaters, i feel like that’s what they’d kind of associate it with which would freak them out more. God forbid they hear about how common cannibalism is in survival situations, I don’t even know if they’d be able to sympathize the slightest bit with that considering as far as I know cannibalism Isn’t Really A Thing for them. That’s a thought in of itself tbh, would they be able to reckon with the concept of being so hungry you’d eat people you know, when it’s physically impossible for them to do that? How do you rationalize the choices others make in desperate situations when you know you’d never have to make that choice anyway and you’ll never have their perspective on it?

Anyways, I’m entertained by the idea of them being able to ignore stuff like nuggets or patties considering it doesn’t look recognizable as what it is but being downright repulsed by steaks, especially if its bloody or has bone visible. They don’t like the visual reminders of their sweet little organic friends consuming flesh and blood. Too freaky for them.

This had context but I refuse to tell anyone

Me: wow im feeling so much better today

-leaves the house-

-gets so overwhelmed by everything suddenly I have to run out of the car and hide behind a fountain-

Me:

Me: I am doing so great rn

A very normal scientist doing very normal gene splicing experiments (Patreon)

We needed Celebrimbor as Dalamar, to go with Annatar as Raistlin and Finrod as Crysania.

He could also double as book!Dalamar, tbh. But because it's my Celebrimbor design, he's wearing the silver ring splints I've drawn for him before.

for @chthonion and @actual-bill-potts 💙

so i actually posted this comic yesterday on twitter and I um... don’t come at me after today’s episode please, i couldn’t have known.

thomas is such an interesting character because everything he does is so affected by his trauma. and even though there’s layers to that trauma, all of those layers stem from or ultimately come back to one event (his death). his trauma is complex, but at the same time it happened in a millisecond.

we don’t see other characters react the way he does to sudden loud noises (save for the captain at times, but that’s just him I think) or have the obviously deeply flawed thought processes he has. he’s stuck in a cycle of almost recreating the build-up to the traumatic event or searching for the same thing over and over again (women who look like Isabelle did, frankly). obsessing over things, but especially women, to the point where at times he is actively trying to convince himself he’s in love.

we see this very clearly in season 3 with his rapid switching of love interests between two women who happen to look alike, and he even twists Mary’s words so it affirms to him that what he is experiencing is infatuation and not a very, very long lived and deeply ingrained trauma response.

his lack of boundaries is not okay by any means, but ultimately I’ve met so many people with complex trauma (which I also have) who have shockingly similar thought patterns. his understanding of love is both immature/underdeveloped and tainted by the pain his mind associates with it by default.

final note for this rant: the fact thomas touches his wound when romance or death are brought up is such a clever detail regarding all of this.

I find it genuinely fascinating and disturbing alike how the stereotype of autism, at least in many left-leaning spaces, has shifted in recent years from being a tragic, isolating white boys' disease, that tears families apart and is truly a fate worse than death for the sufferer, to a frivolous and #aesthetic white GIRLS' quirk that never has any ACTUALLY detrimental effects, not even any social difficulties, all these girls on TikTok can mask well and talk Normally and only flap cutely so what's YOUR excuse?

We spent maybe 5 figurative minutes talking about how autism mommy culture is abusively ableist in the way it simultaneously bends over backward to avoid teaching autistic kids - ESPECIALLY autistic boys - any meaningful coping skills, writing the whole concept off as just truly impossible (it's just the nature of The Autism Winning, these poor poor children are just tragically locked in their own heads, and if they're boys, well, Boys Will Be Boys, there's certainly nothing to be done for the meltdowns, stress reduction and clearer communication is a hopeless endeavor, he's just Acting Out completely arbitrarily, no I haven't actually TRIED I don't need to I Just Know), but simultaneously demands that kids learn these skills on their own because their parents just refuse to communicate with them on their own terms - then the fidget spinner trend happened, we got a whole stim toy industry, it blended with influencer and wannabe-influencer culture, and now...we just have a whole new stereotype that's no better; what it reduces in potential as eugenics propaganda, it makes up for in denial of support needs and misogynistic overtones.

In short, I fucking hate it.

honestly misa and light are so compelling to me because both of them have like, subzero interest in one another and in fact actively resist any attempt to learn one single thing about the other. this is obvious from light's side of things & probably does not need expanding upon, but misa also does not care even a little bit about light -- she is instead in this parasocial relationship with this fake made-up version of him that has nothing whatsoever to do with him. like the amount of effort she puts into ignoring and wildly misinterpreting every single non-instructional thing light has ever told her is truly astounding. she lives with him for years and is genuinely convinced that he's a sweet, thoughtful man who is completely obsessed with her and can't live without her due to the depths of his love. they're soulmates and also strangers.