i genuinely don’t get cishet monsterfuckers. for context, in the wake of shape of water i participated in this loving-the-monstrous type discussion event slash publishing party wherein i debuted a short story about a woman who “befriends” a cave monster—but that isnt the point. the point is i had to hear straight women talk for hours about how the appeal of monsters is some kind of weird “taming the beast” fantasy—loving a monster until it loves you back, sounding like every bad beauty and the beast take ever.

And there’s my queer ass being like literally none of you get it. this isn’t about power, this is about love and alienation and acceptance. you dumbasses, I’m the monster. this isn’t a metaphor for your shitty boyfriend, this is a metaphor for my own alienation from a society that tells me a the way i am and the way I love are grotesque. this is a fantasy of love free of judgement, separate from societal standards that I’ll never live up to anyway. that ghoul doesn’t care if I’m fat, they think it’s hot that I eat well. that immortal fae creature doesn’t care if the gender on my birth certificate matches the one I use now, they barely have a concept of gender in the first place. that tentacle monster doesn’t care if I shave, they don’t have eyes

monsterfucking is queer culture, everyone else go home

Oh. I’m guessing those were all yt women, too. Del Toro isn’t Queer, afaik, but he -is- Mexican in the us. It wasn’t really that long ago that interracial relationships were just as forbidden and taboo as Queer ones and there’s still obviously race tensions going on. The other in Shape of the Water is just as much, and likely written as, being a different race and the feeling of alienation of having a different place of origin. It happens to resonate with everyone who’s ever been considered a monster by society, and there’s not just one way this has happened.

The whole “love someone until they’re not a monster” is extra, super gross in that context because people don’t feel BIPOC are actually capable of human emotions who need to be taught to be human by some benevolent yt person who’s fetishised their body.

reblog this version pls

It’s important to remember that disabled people are also included in this other, both by society and textually in Shape of Water.  Elisa, the lead, is mute, and deals with a lot of shit because of it, particularly from the cishet white man villain.  Her disability is also what allows her to connect to the monster, as she’s able to teach him ASL signs he can communicate with.  They’re able to connect because they’re both different.  To this day, disabled people face a lot of barriers to relationships, like potentially losing disability benefits if they get married in the US. 

Del Toro has a lot of works that boil down to “Different is good and the people trying to fight for the status quo are the true evil here” (shoutout to Pan’s Labyrinth where, in a world full of monsters, the primary antagonist is a white fascist general and abuser).

Naturalists have got to be one of the groups of people most susceptible to being tricked by the fae. Travellers these days are much less likely to follow a mysterious light or the smell of roast beef into the forest. Meanwhile, find me a naturalist who would not completely lose themself in pursuit of:

The Fae better be fuckin ready to be tagged and fitted with a Radio Collar for Science then, I got new hiking boots and no other ideas for research grant money.

it’s called fashion, sweaty

speedpaint!

redbubble | society6

oh no....the full moon...you have to run, i won't be able to control myself once i tr-AUGH....GRRRRRRRAAAAAUUUYGGGGHHHHHH *painfully contorts my body and my bones crack and when my scary transformation is complete i am a little rabbit sitting peacefully on the ground*

i’m in the mood to be mean today.

i’m sick of people complaining about everything while not actively participating in the spaces they’re complaining about. this goes for folks on tiktok who migrate to tumblr and don’t interact, c.ai users who treat fanfiction writers like they’re robots, empty blogs, non-fandom users talking down to fandom blogs, etc.

y’all all talk a big game about how people are doing things the wrong way, or how you don’t like x y and z, as if YOU aren’t responsible for your own experience on tumblr. we have the capabilities to block tags, words, and blogs. if you don’t like something then don’t interact with said thing. especially if you make it a point to hardly interact with it in the first place.

upset about smut? BLOCK THE SMUT TAG.

upset a writer has kinks you don’t like? BLOCK THE KINK TAGS.

upset someone is being fucking annoying? BLOCK THEM.

i’m so sick of it! if you don’t have the wherewithal to adjust your experience to what’s good for you, that’s a personal problem. i’ve blocked SO many people this past week alone because y’all can’t help but to complain the SECOND a fandom space isn’t tailored to your EXACT wants. some people i’ve blocked just because they were annoying the hell out of me!! because i am in control of my online experience. i swear some of you need to make that a daily affirmation.

acclimating to spaces online is no different that how you would in the real world. i didn’t do a whole capstone project on communication styles, cultures, and dialects between different social media sites (with an emphasis on tumblr, tiktok, and instagram) with nothing to go off of: there IS an established culture on tumblr. you are MEANT to interact with people here, with asks, reblogs, and comments being the most important ways of interacting. you’re also meant to adjust your experiences to what you enjoy. that’s like the whole point of this site. sure, you can get recommendations, but NOT in the same way you would on tiktok. its your responsibility to look after your own experiences here.

people are going to do annoying shit all the time, and on this site you can just simply not look at it!! how do you guys survive in public, my god!!

upset a writer

has kinks you don’t like? BLOCK THE

KINK TAGS.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

god this joke socked me right in the gut only to be followed up with the most heartbreaking shit in the world in jammer telling evan:

this show is trying to kill me i swear

The Pilot Program are the first people in his life to want to make space for him

My ancestors, watching me dump an entire stick of cinnamon, two cloves, an allspice berry, and a generous grating of nutmeg into my tea, sweetened with white sugar and loaded with cream, while I sit in my clean warm house surrounded by books, 25+ outfits for different occasions, and 6 pairs of shoes, in a building heated so well I have the windows open in mid-autumn:

Our daughter prospers. We are proud of her. She has never labored in a field but knows riches we could not have imagined.

I like this so much better than the idea that our ancestors would be embarrassed or ashamed of us for being “soft” or some crap like that.

My ancestors, watching me stuff my face with fried chicken while studying: She eats like an imperial concubine and can afford to study like am imperial scholar. WE MADE IT

She eats like an imperial concubine and can afford to study like am imperial scholar

My ancestors watching me use my stand mixer while living in a small apartment and attending university: Thou hast kneadeth bread in FOUR hail marys??? FOUR??? And thou ist poor as a churchmouse, yet liveth in a fine cottage with four pounds butter and fresh berries in thy larder!! And two featherbeds! And thou attendeth the King’s college, as a lord!!

My ancestors being like:

Look at this fine young lady! She can paint she can sew and embrody, she sings and read

And without a wealthy father to pay for that, plus she is florid in the body! She doesn’t know hunger!

We did it!

Me: /wearily studying/

My Ancestors: TRULY SH— what? They? A little unorthodox, but reasonable I suppose. TRULY THEY PROSPER, FOR THEY LIVE IN A DWELLING WITH MANY ROOMS AND ONLY THEIR SPOUSE TO SHARE IT WITH! THEY HAVE DOGS WHO DO NOT PERFORM A FUNCTION! THEY HAVE MANY BOOKS AND DO NOT HAVE TO SPIN THEIR OWN YARN! THEY BATHE AT A WHIM WITH GENTLE SOAP FREE OF LYE! OUR DESCENDANT BRINGS HONOR AND PRIDE TO OUR LINEAGE!

Me: /yawns and sips my coffee/

My Ancestors: /cheer wildly/

Me: *hunched over at my desk nursing a headache.*

My Ancestors: “Truly, we prosper; see here, our infirm descendant need not even work on her poor days, but has the luxury to rest as she sees need! A doctor attends to her illnesses; her clothes are warm and free of pests; she cares for exotic and dangerous animals within her own home! We have found the height of luxury!”

Me: *treats myself to a pineapple and a bunch of bananas*

My Georgian ancestors: ZOOTH SHE HAS BOUGHT A PINEAPPLE! NOT MERELY BORROWED ONE! TRULY SHE HAS ACHIEVED FAR MORE THAN WE COULD KNOW!

me: [puts on warm socks and a blanket, is now warm regardless of the weather outside]

My impoverished Russian Jewish ancestors:

Me: [learns to knit from youtube videos]

My ancestors: Our descendant, the heir to all our hopes and fears for a far-off future… She can buy fine clothes woven and knit by automatons, with but a fraction of a day’s earnings… and she does… she has so much free time to do as she pleases… and she uses some of that time to do what we did.

One woman from rural Poland, who died from smallpox in 1717 CE, a grandmother at 35: I knit roses and peonies into my and my children’s gloves… it wasn’t much extra work to dye the red, once I had already cleaned the wool and spun the yarn, and to knit in the designs… and I wasn’t a gifted knitter but I was a good knitter, and I thought, well, it might not make a difference to how warm the glove is, but it made the children happy and it made me happy. I liked to make things beautiful when I could.

Another woman, a peasant from what’s now France, who died from getting kicked by a mammoth in 8995 BCE: [Patting her on the back] I made my family’s clothes too. Every day my sister and I wove and wove and tended our children. We went out of our way to make the cloth lovely. Not a trace of it remains anywhere on earth now… But it mattered to us. And she might not know our names, or know it was us, but evidently, it matters to her too. She has so much beauty available to her, in every direction, and she wants to make it where we once made it.

[everyone sobbing and high-fiving each other.]

A man from Britain, 1104 CE, sitting at the trans-temporal telescope, reporting on my doings: She’s stopped knitting and now she’s playing minecraft.

The other ancestors: Ah, yes, the dream of building. We know this one well. What vision doth she design now?

Telescope man: Looks like… Some kind of floating temple?

Everyone: [Goes completely apeshit]

Me: studying Marine Biology, out in the middle of the Elkhorn slough absolutely fucking covered in the most foul-smelling mud and swamp scum you can imagine, deliriously happy as I spot a tell-tale bubbling in the mud. I jump off the small dock and drive my entire arm into the mud like a Mortal Kombat Character ripping someone’s heart out of their chest, and pull out a 4lb, two-foot long Geoduck Clam and hold it aloft, triumphant.

My Homminid ancestors, who were doing exactly this with much smaller clams 900,000 years ago: *going absolutely literally apeshit over my flawless technique and the marvelous size of my quarry* CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! WHOOOOOOOOO!!!!

OH MY! I love this.

9-8-23

My ancestors and forbears, as I like to hope:

Hey Gertrude isn’t that your furniture? Oh yeah she’s still using it. WITH a mat to keep from leaving rings on the wood from her drink! Oh look, she lives independently and has her own bank account! AND a sweet little dog! I always wanted one of those. Oh look ROSES in the garden, that’s proper. A girl should have roses. Is she embroidering? Not this time it’s hand sewing. Nice stitches. She gets it from me. Nah, me! Wait AUTISM?? THAT’S what we had going on that whole time??? And ADHD yeah; runs in the family. Your side? Both sides. Really common. Oh. Shoot. It wasn’t just me!! Me either. Aww yiss she’s having chocolate. Hey is that- HAH! It’s a longbow! Told you the archery bug never goes away. Well she learned OUR version first with the pinch draw. Half decent shot. Nice. Eh, she’ll get better. Guitarra? Oh SI. I helped invent those you know. Did not. Yes I did, me and like 80 other guys in Spain at the time, we kind of group developed this shape and hear how much better it sounds! They run in the family. Guitars? I said what I said. Look at all the DOLLS! Do you think she knows we ran a doll shop? Get your grand-daughter to tell her. Isn’t that the doll you gave your daughter? Oh she’s fixing it!!

it’s nice to imagine they’d be proud.

New cosmology dropped, we know what's underneath the turtle now!

@mr-crocodile

Worst Case vs. Best Case Scenarios by Karina Farek.

This is a great joke, but it’s also a wonderful strategy for reducing anxiety that I learned about in therapy. If you’re ever nervous about something, just ask yourself: what’s the best thing that can happen? What’s the worst thing? What will most likely happen?

It does wonders for your nerves, really does.

I can not explain how much this comic has helped me over the years. I think about this constantly and it helps so much.

I think this will help me a lot too

Holy shit

Before everybody realized it was really dumb and didn't work, there was a short period of time where cavalry in full plate armor rode into battle with a carbine and a sword. Historians widely regard this era as "rad as hell" and describe the tactic as "totally fucking sick, like, holy shit, could you imagine?"

How to plan a long-term creative project for serial publication:

1. Make a firm decision about how big a single update is going to be, and estimate your sustainable update frequency based on that. This estimate should be based solely on your own demonstrated performance; you may anticipate that future productivity will exceed past productivity, but never make long-range plans on the assumption that future productivity will exceed past productivity. That is called the Planning Fallacy, and it will eat you alive.

2. Estimate how often you’re likely to miss updates. As a rough guideline, if you’re physically and mentally healthy and have no major commitments that would interfere with your ability to work on the project, figure that you’ll miss about 10% of your updates for various reasons. If you have health issues or frequent Real Life commitments, make it 20%. If 20% sounds low to you, you weren’t being honest with yourself about your sustainable update frequency; return to step 1 and re-assess.

3. Figure that you’ve got about two years before you lose interest in the project, gain some new commitment that will preclude continuing to work on it, or your art style evolves enough to make creative continuity impractical. If there’s some upcoming major life change that you’re able to anticipate – like, say, graduating from school – use either two years or that event as your soft deadline, whichever is less.

4. Use the figures from steps 1-3 to estimate how many updates you’re likely to be able to squeeze into this project, and write your outline/script based on that. You don’t need to wrap up every tiny little loose thread by that point, but ideally it needs to reach a point where you could stop and be satisfied with whatever conclusion has been reached. If you get there and you’re still enthusiastic about continuing, fantastic – return to step 1 and re-assess.

So, as a simple example: if you’re planning a webcomic, you figure you can reasonably manage about 1 page a week, and you’ve got a lot going on that’s likely to get in your way, that’s (2 years * 52 weeks/year * 1 update/week * 80% success rate on updates) = around 83 pages to work with, or about the length of a four-issue miniseries. What kind of story can you tell in 80-odd pages?

(Hint: it’s not a story that involves fifty-page combat scenes!)

This is great advice.

When I was making Lunar Maladies (my 464 page webcomic–I will never make a comic that long ever again, it truly could have been a tight 250 if I’d know anything about editing at the time… but what can I say I started it when I was 19) I knew I could reliably take 3 pages from thumbnails to final art every week. So I only updated the comic with 1 page a week. I had over a year of buffer at one point. Because I had built in that security for myself. I know I’m a fallible human & I try to set up my workflow in such a way that I don’t feel bad/guilty/beat myself up about being a normal person with normal obligations that sometimes eclipse drawing comics.

Anyways, working within your limitations is great & allows you to create for longer without having a disastrous level of burnout.

reblog to give prev a color?!?