spitey little triangle

mostly running on queue but im still spamming 24/7 - adult - art over @birdsongisland - wonderful header by @oh-theatre - i've got a sewing tag and a personnal post tags but other than that it's just spin the wheel

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

some very important life reminders to help you through your days:

“i’m taking up too much space.”

this is hard to get into your head, because it can feel like no one wants you around. you are not a waste of space and you are not taking up too much space. you are a person, and people know that. we are so focused on ourselves in different ways. for you, you might worry you’re annoying people with your presence. but for them, they don’t think much of it because they know you’re a person who will take up as much space as needed.

“crying is a weakness.”

some kids are raised to think it’s not okay to cry. which is crazy because it’s a normal bodily thing to release emotions. don’t feel bad for crying. do it. cry. let it out. no one has a right to judge your feelings or your tears. we all have those days that are overwhelming and call for a good cry.

“i’ll never be enough.”

you will always be enough for the right people. you will always be enough in general but some people won’t appreciate that and that’s on them. you are you. you are you doing your best. don’t let anyone, and i mean anyone, take that away from you.

“my friends treat me like a therapist and i need boundaries.”

it feels great to be trusted enough that your friends confide in you, but it’s okay to be honest with them when they’re asking for too much. you can’t replace a professional who is trained to help with mental illness and shouldn’t be held to that expectation. let them know that you have to take care of yourself too.

“i always drive people away.”

people will come and go no matter how much we want them to stay. sometimes they’re not the right people for you, especially if they make you feel like it’s always your fault. if being yourself drives them away, you dodged a bullet. but it’s okay if it takes you time to come to terms with that. it’s easy to blame yourself for people not staying, but try to slowly learn not to.

“i don’t know how to live with myself.”

learning to live happily with yourself takes so much time and patience. start with a little time. get to know yourself apart from other people. understand it will be frustrating. do things for yourself you normally wouldn’t think you deserve. the time will come when you realize it’s not so bad.

“i need help but feel like a burden for asking.”

everyone needs help sometimes. that does not make you a burden. it does not make you weak. the people who love you are more than willing to help especially if it means you don’t drown in the things you have to handle. reach out. don’t fear coming off as annoying. people can be more understanding than we think.

“i’ve been told i have an annoying personality.”

first i want to say you do not need to change yourself to make other people like you. their perception of you is theirs and it doesn’t define you. the opinions you should actually listen to will come from those who know you and love you because they know you.

“if someone doesn’t like me back i feel like it’s my fault or there’s something wrong with me.”

we can’t be everyone’s cup of tea. and we can’t choose who we like. there’s nothing wrong with you, and how they feel about you is out of your control. it’s out of their control. you deserve someone who accepts you as you are. you deserve to know that there are people out there who will fall in love with you as you are. rejection, unfortunately, will happen a lot in life. it’s not your fault. it’s a part of being a person with your own personality.

“i do everything wrong.”

everyone makes mistakes but they don’t define us. it may feel like you’re always messing up, but what it really means if that you’re learning and growing. you do a lot of things right that you don’t think outweigh what you do “wrong”. but you’ll do good things and make mistakes too. the presence of one does not mean the absence of the other.

“i feel useless if i’m not helping my friends.”

we all play a part in other people’s lives, but the most important part is the one you play in your own life. your value does not equate to how much you do for others. it’s wonderful you can be the kind of friend they rely on but you can’t realistically put all the pressure on being only that friend. i’m sure your friends will love you no matter how you contribute to their lives.

[besidethepath]

The sedge warbler is back and has already found a fan in the tree sparrow, which now also frolics through the reeds.

[omagpies]

so a couple of weeks ago I found out that my secret lifelong affliction is called Swallow Syncope and is an actual recognised syndrome and not what I affectionately call ‘ate so fast I blacked out’ bitch disease

(Patreon open post link)

[nattousan]

ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)

[nattousan]

and now, the birds

Birds 1 and 2/14: Red Winged Blackbird, Male and female, Agelaius phoeniceus

[nattousan]

Bird 3/14, American Robin, Turdus migratorius

[nattousan]

hoo boy, ok *out of breath*

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

this guy took me about 4 days to completely finish, all of those freakingk coverts were a bear to render

[nattousan]

speaking of obnoxious coverts:

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

the friggin stripes almost got me chat, i may not make it

[nattousan]

Madam....

[nattousan]

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

pleasantly simple to paint! next is the flickerrrrr

[nattousan]

*melts into goo*

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

nothing but pain and suffering, i'm sure hope the next bird will be much easier and with FAR less barring :)

[nattousan]

in other news, I am losing my mind hairline

[nattousan]

SHE'S DONE!!

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

[nattousan]

*does a little jig*

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹

[manipulated-pieces]

Why is it easier and more comfortable to sit in a position that actively damages my joints than it is to just sit with okay posture. Why does my body crave its own destruction

[byjove]

this is a highly controversial opinion, I have no doubt King Arthur was bisexual but I think he was one of the few people in Camelot not interested in fucking Lancelot. he wanted to retain him as an employee but it did not cross his mind that Lancelot was fucking his wife because Lancelot is such a weird little twerp that he did not perceive him as a sexual being. my interpretation.

[byjove]

So true. The Galehaut/Lancelot relationship was like a dynastic marriage to resolve the conflict between two imperial powers. I like to imagine Galehaut was like “I have decided to abandon my plans of capturing [what is now] all of southern England and surrender to you despite my military advantage, all for the love of my achingly beautiful and spectacular new male wife, Lancelot du Lac.” and Arthur was like “Okay. Weird. Not homophobic or anything but Lancelot? You’re in love with Lancelot?”

[byjove]

Co-signed. That’s some real shit you said. Also, unlike Arthur, he was willing to yield and share his lover for everyone’s benefit. And then he died for love. A real freak. One of the best freaks in 13th century French literature.

[byjove]

he’s the most interesting gay wifeguy in literary gay knight history

[elodieunderglass]

I started a mental sentence with, “well, when we diagram the Arthurian polycule-“

And then realised that would be such a good title for a paper. “Diagramming the Arthurian Polycule: Mapping the Dynamics of the Round Kitchen Table”

[everydaylouie]

good and evil

[todaysbird]

What kinda dog is this?

Bird dog of some sort…

(house sparrow!)

[desolationlesbian]

sometimes I think too hard about like. how the ability to record audio fundamentally changed how humans interact with music. can you imagine if the only time you ever heard music in your whole life was when you or another human being in your actual physical presence decided to create it. and 99.99% of the time that person was not a professional but just like your wife or your dad or your co-worker or church choir singing or playing whatever they happened to know. i honestly don't think we can fathom it

[desolationlesbian]

Everyone on this post making nonsense "WAH it must have been BETTER back then" comments is ridiculous. I have 24/7 instant high-quality access to Carly Rae Jepsen's entire catalog. Go listen to Cut To The Feeling and appreciate that miracle or get off my post.

[byjove]

Inflation has made me not understand prices anymore in the sense that I no longer understand what an appropriate price for any food is. Is a $5 bag of chips a good deal? Because that sounds fucking insane to 2018 me. And yet, that is how much they cost.

[anonbeadraws]

warmup comic commission for @candlenav about the game Below. com info

[oracleoutlook]

Teaching Shakespearean Sonnets to Brain Rot 15-Year-Olds

There's hope.

My co-teacher came up with an idea. She said to me: “I’m going to project a Shakespearean sonnet on the board that you have never seen before. They are going to watch you struggle through it, and they are going to see what it takes to authentically annotate something to attempt to understand it”. This was a good idea because it targeted a pitfall of my teaching: that I already know the answer— a predetermined answer I want my students to come to. Therefore, when I ask the class a question, they are aware that there is an answer in my head I want them to arrive at. This method can stifle students’ voice. So, I stood at the front of the classroom that day, feeling exposed, sight-reading Shakespearean sonnets. With most of the sonnets, I, with the help of the class, could only get to about 75% understanding and accuracy at best. But my confusion — my apparent struggle and frustration in understanding each new sonnet— was key for my students. They felt free to posit their interpretations and even to disagree with me. In each session, a student shared a thought or possibility that not only I had failed to see but was also ultimately accurate. One student couldn’t wipe the smile off her face when she figured out a metaphor that stumped both me and my co-teacher. “This was fun”, she and her classmate said to each other when the bell rang.

[playwrongs]

Adding @leporellian’s tags because—yeah, agreed, the hierarchy seems to have been the problem here.

[rosedawsontyler]

Two very pretty kitties

[stillnaomi]

denying trans kids hrt when they're sure of which puberty they want to go through is also an act of oppression. even if puberty blockers are available, we're not protecting kids by denying them the opportunity to go through puberty at the same time as their peers

"what if they go through physical changes that they later regret?" we allow cis kids to take that risk. in fact, most of them are never even given a choice and told they might regret it. just educate trans kids about what hrt will and won't do for them, then let them decide

[mousidy]

my heart does kind of die a little when people gender children who are too young to communicate that determination for themselves. it's so normalized as to be practically universal but it's also the first in a long line of decisions taken away from every trans child

[mousidy]

"it's safe to assume they're cis" do you not conceive of their transness as a real possibility? if they do turn out to be trans, they now have to make that assertion against what the dominant authorities in their lives have been saying since their brain was at its most impressionable

[mousidy]

I miss when this was still even a discussion on the table. I miss when I thought I could look forward to a future where children like me wouldn't have to languish for so long before being able to be our authentic selves

[mousidy]

at every step of the way we live in a world that refuses to account for us, and it falls to our shoulders to push to be respected, considered, accounted for. it's exhausting, it's isolating, it's terrifying, and increasingly it seems like fewer and fewer people are willing to come to our corner

[another--gaza--blogg]

i remember a few years there where a bunch of new parents were all they/themming their children and gave them neutral names and neutral clothes until the child took it upon themselves to lean in one direction or another. i remember seeing families with a blue haired 7 year old wearing a pink tutu and a bionicle tshirt.

that lasted all of. like. 5 years max. now youre a pedophile for even considering it.

[kitchen1]

I wish I took a better pic of this writing in a bar bathroom in toronto bc I think of it so often. Be So Completely Yourself That No One Is Attracted To You Or Wants To Employ You

[galileosballs]

This interview with Ncuti Gatwa crossed my dash again, and I was reminded of how much I like it. Because it makes the rare Third Argument for representation in fiction, the argument I think is the best, and I'm always happy to see it. I quote:

At times, Gatwa’s casting in those projects has been dismissed as an exercise in ‘box-ticking’. Gatwa scoffs. ‘First of all, you don’t know anything about me. Secondly, tick fcking boxes! People need to be fcking seen. What are you going to do, tell the same stories? Have the same people fronting things for all of eternity? Representation and inclusivity and branching out… it enriches us all. How embarrassing. You people with your tiny mindsets – open a book, look out the window and then f*ck off.’ (source)

What do I mean by the Third Argument? Well, I'm not sure I've ever made a post about this directly, but as far as I can see it, there are three main arguments for greater diversity in popular media. The first two are the most common, and they go like this:

It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see people like them on screen. That is, the beneficiaries are marginalized people.

It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see and learn about people who are not like them through art. That is, the beneficiaries are non-marginalized people, who then (hopefully) pass on the benefit by treating marginalized people better.

These two arguments are the source of a lot of debate here on ye olde tumblr. Despite both being arguments for representation, they pull in different directions. What counts as 'good' representation for the purposes of Argument 1 often would not be good for the purposes of Argument 2, and vice versa. Authentic versus sympathetic. Ugly or over-sanitized. You see this debate play out constantly. It's really hard for a piece of - say - queer media to do both at once.

But these debates tend to leave out Argument 3, the one that Gatwa is making above. And that argument cuts through a lot of this debate.

3. It is good for media to be diverse because art needs variety. The beneficiary of representation is art itself, absent any social effects that may or may not be present.

For this argument, diverse stories are intrinsically good. It is good to make art that's not just the same thing you've seen a hundred times before. Putting the kinds of people who don't often make it into mainstream media into your art is an extremely efficient way to make that happen. It's not the only method, but it's a really good method.

For representation to be 'good representation' according to Argument 3, all it needs to be is interesting. A story you haven't heard before, at least not in that medium. That which counts as 'bad representation' by the lights of this argument are stock characters, like the Eternally Patient Mother, the Gay Best Friend, the Wise Black Advisor. Perhaps there was a time in which these characters were new, but that time has long passed. There's no art in pulling a bog-standard character trope off the shelf. Show us a new kind of guy. The world is infinitely diverse. You're not going to run out. Telling the same stories with the same voices for all eternity, as Gatwa says, is boring. Even if there was nothing else wrong with it, this would be. Art isn't supposed to be boring.

And that's why Argument 3 is my favourite. I do want the world to be a better place, of course, and I think art is a part of that. But the main job of art is to be good as art. And diversity in all aspects of the production of art makes art better.

[alfvaen]

"It's not about adding diversity for the sake of diversity, it's about subtracting homogeneity for the sake of realism." --Mary Robinette Kowal