This is your intermittent reminder that worrying about whether you're "queer enough" is a standard part of the package. Congratulations: you're definitely queer enough.

(This also goes if you never have that worry - you're queer enough, my love.)

wlw is underrated. fact.

With every birthday/new year I'm reminded of how much of a failure I am. I don't know what to ever do to take steps forward. And it's really sad that I'm so so emotionally/ psychologically weak I can't just headbutt difficulties and just grab opportunities. It's like I feel like I don't even deserve the things I want and..I don't know how to fix it

something i wish i'd see more in trigun fanarts is people having vash speak their native/non-english languages completely unprompted, ive seen folks have him speak french, which he canonically knows, but i really do believe he's a polyglot. mostly because of that one time in the desert when he saw the samurai and wanted to greet him in japanese but struggled to remember how to even say hello.

my headcanon is that rem had them learn as many languages as possible but with the big fall and so many people dying, which i think is what led english to became No man's land main (or even only?) language, means that vash (and knives!) both got horribly out of practice and are various sort of rusty in every others languages.

what im saying if there's any pun or joke you've been dying to write but just doesn't work in english vash (and knives!!) are right there!

[4]

AND FAI GENTLY TOUCHES HIM

Fai gently extends that small connection, still new and fresh between them. Lava Lamp has been physically apart from them during his recounting of his story but now Fai closes that distance to give him support for what he knows is surely coming next. 

And I love that it’s Fai that does this. It’s Fai who ALSO knows what it’s like to make a promise as a child that will define the rest of your life in an ugly and torturous way. When you don’t understand the full meaning of the words you say it’s easy to say them, but then you have to live with the unknowable consequences of that or know that you let that person die and then gave up on them. 

Fai has the unique parallel of having also been manipulated into a pact as a child - but he’s also a sign that you can survive it. That you can let it control you forever or you can slowly heal and let it all go. But Fai’s promise was made on the grounds of a lie that Evil Wolverine told him, and in reality his brother was always out of reach. Lava Lamp’s promise is a bit different, given that Sakura's fate is still up in the air, but he’s still the closest person to understand that kind of burden. 

And regardless, the point of the moment is that Lava Lamp is not alone anymore, and they communicate that between without a single word. 

Happy “10 years of apparently mispronouncing one of the most important locations in canon” Day

i thought my fallout oc, fay, deserves to be in more than just one viddy gay franchise so i made her in tow because its fitting :3

all love and joy to all my darling american internet friends and mutuals etc etc but if I ever have to learn another thing about us news ever again I think I'm going to blow something up

Fay Dunbar cannot exist in my head without Death. This is, honestly, a kind of interesting side effect of picking her out as the third sibling protag in NOPC. In NOPC, a lot of her growth is around being dead, around having been violently murdered and then just as violently ripped back to the living world by Harry's desperation.

Okay, you say, so that's one au, now what?

But NOPC is such a LARGE au, that it's really not "just one au". I've spent years rounding out these characters and picking their arcs and dynamics. Fay Dunbar is instrinctically linked to this version of herself, now. Faith Dunbar-Black IS Fay Dunbar, and that carries into any other au.

In DMFD, Fay is just as bright, she still lives above a morgue, but now she's the adopted kid and her parents don't foster. She goes out and befriends ghosts and hunts down horcruxes on ACCIDENT and is still best friends with Harry, even though it's an entirely separate au with a completely different premise and genre.

In Anerythristic, Fay is bright and violent and traumatized, but it wasn't HER who was viciously murdered, it was her sister, and she grows up, yes, but she never RECOVERS from that.

Even in TRTR, where she's barely showed up, she still operates as usual - incredibly bright and high energy, because she knows that if she's loud enough, people will ignore her. Her dad is still a mortician. Her childhood puzzles were piecing skulls back together for funerals.

No matter the au, if I'm writing Fay, she is Tied To Death. She is clever, and she is a liar. She is loud because if people see what she shows them, they won't look for what she doesn't. She is friendly and affectionate but she knows without trying the fastest way to kill you, and she's not above Doing So.

Okay listen, because nothing was ever going to prepare me for this, but when I first came out*, I had no idea what a profound effect that was going to have on other people.

I thought I was braced for the bad stuff, how some people’s fear about what your simple existence means can dampen, darken, and corrode your joy, your sense of safety. I wasn’t prepared for the scale of that, but that’s not what this post is about.

I had no fucking clue that my existence as a queer person taking up space could mean so much joy and relief for others. And I was utterly unprepared for how that has only increased as I’ve aged, and as the world has become more connected. Eventually, a young trans man explained it to me, saying that seeing me just... living, 30 years older than him, brought him hope, a model for the future, that there was a future, for the first time. Several others chimed in to say the same and I felt airless for a dizzying second. I hadn’t been able to really understand, until that point, why various younger queer folk would thank me on Twitter, call me and others like me icons. We’d shrug: We’re just... being, we���d say. Exactly, they’d reply.

I thought that things were easier for young, queer folk now. That they have more access to information and vocabulary and acceptance than we did, growing up. Hell, I might never have worked out my gender stuff if younger folk weren’t out there being loud about their pronouns, breaking down microlabels, and sharing their feelings about their existence.

And that’s also true, but being visibly queer, and over 30, and it not being a tragedy? That gives people enormous hope. That’s a landmark to reach, a future to picture yourself in. My life is nowhere near perfect, but it exists.

And heavens, it’s good to know that these proliferating silver hairs and wrinkles are beautiful signs for those who long for the decades’ stretch between now and then.

_____

(*still not quite realising that it’s something you do again and again, and sometimes additionally, if - like me - you find yourself going “oh, and this thing too”)

Quelqu’un serait intéressé à faire un univers alternatif de chevaliers d’Émeraude/ héritiers d’Enkidiev avec moi?

smiles you’re so so so pretty

fay 😭 thank you, you’re so so so kind 🥹 it was funny because I was my first time using this new flyaway hair wand brand and usually I hate when I have gel in my hair, but the slick half up and down hairstyle was the vibe for the day! I also tied a white bow on my claw clip and it looked so cute but I don’t think anyone took a photo of the back of my head lmao and so I kept checking through my camera and ended up taking a couple blurry selfies, and then remembered beomgyu for his iconic blurry selfies too 🤭 sorry I rambled, BUT THANK YOU AGAIN 🫶🏼🫶🏼

Fairy Magic and Culture

(a tiny bit of worldbuilding, mostly for Fay's era)

Fairies are magical creatures that can easily grant health recovery and life. It’s wise for those who go into battle or often get injured to employ the services of a fairy by bottling them up whenever they find one for emergency use. Fairies, however, detested such a crude method. Thus, hyrulean people (especially hylians) would build fountains all over Hyrule to honor the fairies and give thanks for their blessings. It would give fairies safe havens to fly around freely while giving soldiers reliable places to heal serious wounds without bottles. Fairies that grow in strength and magic take on larger forms and can become great fairies, gaining domain over their own fountains and can grant magical blessings or items to those they deem worthy.

OOT: It became something of a tradition for small children to leave small gifts or trinkets in the fountains or leave bowls of sugar water by gardens or flowerbeds. Fairies became especially fond of Kokiri children and many would bond together with them.

LOZ1: In Fay’s time, Hyrule experienced a downfall since the Era of Decline: monsters roam freely, population has dwindled, and most of the fairy fountains dried up. There’s a bit of an ‘every man for himself’ mentality, many people learn to defend themselves and can make tentative alliances or even friendships in towns. However, ‘weaker’ creatures like fairies were sought after by hylians and monsters alike, threatening and taking advantage of their healing services without anything in return.

Thus, fairies of Fay's time have developed a crafty, distrusting lifestyle with special rules and defense mechanisms in place to protect themselves from those who may take advantage of them. Think fairytale fae rules like “never make a deal with the fae” but it’s not quite the same rules:

Fay's Fairy Culture

Water: Without fairy fountains, fairies usually take residence in small ponds or other protected bodies of water. It can refresh the fairies and provide a place to rest or relax. These bodies of water act as very small pockets of reality that fairies can enter (not a full parallel realm but only fragments of one). People can only enter if fairies grant them access and can be trapped there if a fairy doesn’t grant them leave. Great fairies can have dominion over a fairy pond but get too cramped in tiny bodies of water, either revoking their “great” status to return to their original size or taking on a human form to hopelessly find a large enough body of water. Fairies can grow weak when they cannot find a fairy pond to rest and even settle for really damp caves.

Deals: Fairies used to give their healing freely but have since become more protective of their magic. Fairies thus began binding people to magic contracts or deals. The fairies could heal someone and leave the person in debt to the fairy and this debt can be alleviated by compensating or rewarding the fairy. This compensation can come in the form of rupees, sugar water, small trinkets, protection from enemies, not being trapped in bottles, or whatever the fairy chooses. The compensation has to fit the healing, larger injuries require larger rewards in exchange. Fairies learned to infuse magic into their words to make these special deals; one cannot break a fairy deal without receiving double their injury back or in some cases death. This is especially helpful when monsters try to grab fairies and threaten them to heal their injuries. Some especially keen fairies go out of their way to find random injured people and heal them unprompted before manipulating their words of gratitude into an implied debt to receive supplies or simply to play tricks. Most fairies participate in this practice to protect themselves, treating healing as a forced business transaction, but few like Fay choose not to make deals (though Fay has gotten himself out of a nasty situation or two by forcing an injured monster or follower of Ganon into a fairy deal)

Conversation: Never speak disrespectfully to a fairy. As previously mentioned, fairies learned to infuse magic into their words to elicit debt from others. To trick uncooperative people into agreeing to these deals, they’d hide the terms of the agreement behind fancy, overly-polite words. This type of fanciful conversation became the norm between fairies. Fairies hide behind their words and wield them like a weapon, even demanding people to speak fancifully to them back when making these deals and asking for healing. Most fairies refuse to heal others or make deals if they feel the asker spoke disrespectfully or insulted the fairy. Fairies became very perceptive to how words are specifically spoken and developed an ability to discern whether or not someone is dishonest with them. (Fay’s sign language abides by fairy rules of conversation)

Names: Never give your true name to a fairy. Fairies became distrustful and tricky, and because of this they don’t normally give out their true names to strangers. Names are seen as too personal or revealing of one’s identity and implies a bond between both parties: only close friends use each others’ real names and only in closed quarters. Those that give out their true names to fairies are viewed as gullible or overly friendly (possibly hoping to lure the fairy into false security and offer their real name to pretend to be friends). Fairies don’t make friends often and healing is more of a business transaction to them, using random fake names when dealing with people.

Tricks: Fairies cannot directly kill hylians (excluding broken deals) but they can play tricks on them. Using their magic, fairies can make the terms of their deals anything so long as it fits the size of the injury at least. Sometimes if a fairy wishes, they can play tricks on people and make the reward something silly like making the recipient play a game or speak in tongues. Some especially strong and spiteful fairies will trick people into giving them larger rewards if the person agrees to it, even stealing things like the person’s name (if 'given' freely) or a small memory.

Firstborn: Fairies don’t steal or eat people’s firstborn children or anything crazy but they can passively sense if someone is a firstborn child and if someone has siblings. It’s not quite magical, there’s just something very subtle about the way they speak or carry themselves that clues fairies in about their firstborn status. For instance, Fay can sense Legend has an older half-sister or Neptune is the firstborn and has a younger sister.

Food: Don’t accept food from a fairy. This isn’t a dangerous thing, they just make their food wayyyyy too tooth-rottingly sweet (Fay included!)

[8]

Well that’s the Clone Soldiers confirmed. Absolutely wild that we technically saw a bunch of clones in Chapter 1 and just didn’t have the context to know who they were yet. We saw the Sakura clones with Evil Wolverine and now we know the army is made of clones as well. 

But WHO are they clones of? 

I suppose they could just be Miscellaneous people, but I kind of hope that they’d be failed Syaoran clones, just for the parallels of it all. Or maybe they just spare souls that he had no use for and so sloppily shoved them into -

OH

OH WAIT. 

When he says “Souls that I gathered” does he mean in xxxHolic?

When he was harvesting souls from random people?

IS THIS WHAT THEY WERE FOR? DID HE JUST TURN THEM INTO RANDOM BATTLE PAWNS?

If that’s it then, wow, what a weird set up and pay off. 

Wait, no, I’m a bit ahead of myself. He also says they’re failures. So he harvested people’s souls and once they FAILED he turned them into this instead. 

Which is recycling! Very environmentally friendly of him. 

Does this mean when he makes a clone he uses other people’s souls as, like, the base-material? Is he taking random peoples souls and trying to use them to clone Sakura, and then when they mostly fail he reuses them in other roles (like this) instead? 

I might just be thinking aloud here but do we think the Failed Sakura Clones he keeps lounging around his base are Also the soldiers? Are these all Sakura clones, perhaps? Or did he fail to clone Syaoran a bunch of times as well? Or do they become formless and identity-less when he reshapes them for soldier duty?

Going over some old art and compiling some old, old versions of characters! Thought it might be fun to look through em :]

Faux (June) -> Faux (November)

Technically still one of my newest OCs, but he is so very special to me and has developed a BUNCH ever since

B.K (3rd October, 2019) -> B.K (12th November, 2023)

Jesus CHRIST she is 4 years old. Originally she was a joke character, as I keep saying, but she's become one of my most treasured OCs - go-to for doodling, fun to draw, and she has a really out-there personality that I enjoy writing

Fay (21st June, 2019) -> Fay (23rd January, 2023)

Fay is The Original OC of mine. The only character aware of her surroundings and status as a guy in a story, and the most likely to interact with my sonas. She's changed so much but her status remains the same: The storyteller.

Chordis, Flinch, Acri, Sahara, Sol, and Ai (14th Jan 2020) -> Chordis, Acri, Sol, Sahara, and Ai (Various from 2023)

The original polycule! Sahara was I think the most effective redesign because its hat was NOT working for it lmao

To conclude? I dunno man I just wanted to talk about my design progress and my art progress from then to now :D