MarsBar

AhaMarimbas on AO3 | Avatar by the wonderful CubedCoffeeCake

[feefal]

Oyster mermaid~

[feefal]

ah fuck, so sorry ma’am-

[stargazing-enby]

And that’s that on that.

[stargazing-enby]

Happy Pride 2025. This post is 5 years old, and I’m in equal parts proud of it, and annoyed by how chaotic and tacky it is. So I’ve decided to make a new version: one where all the additions are in a single reblog, and with integrated image descriptions (thank you @oddler14 for providing most of these back then!). I would love it if people reblogged this version instead, even if I understand the previous version is much more widespread on Tumblr.

I am one of the people who, for a long time, didn’t feel queer enough. Specifically, as a nonbinary person, I struggled for a long time to believe I was trans enough to even deserve to label myself as trans. This post was the start of my journey unlearning that shame and guilt, which was caused in part by the gatekeepy rhetoric that was predominant in many online spaces. Today, I am confident and joyous in my trans, nonbinary, queer body and mind.

To my 20-year-old self, and to anyone else who might need to hear this: you are queer enough. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. And always, always remember:

(Yes, these banners are free to use. Credit is appreciated!)

[stargazing-enby]

Happy pride! ❤️

[azspot]

“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”

— The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech

[reading-writing-revolution]

[bebsi-cola]

health isn't a virtue.

[bebsi-cola]

people still go around acting like they've done something good in order to be able bodied and healthy. that they worked for it, that it's due to their moral fibre or good upbringing or self control. they genuinely, on some level, believe that they are a good person solely based on the strength of their physical abilities. they will resist the fact that it is largely down to chance that they were able to maintain such health. whatever they think they've built from scratch, the building blocks were already handed to them. not because they're more worthy of it, just by luck. and they really think they're worth more based on that sheer luck. i've met disabled people worth a hundred of the healthiest ableds alive.

[galactic-mayhem]

saw this on pinterest but i think it belongs here too

[vinnie-vindictive]

this will never not be important

[apatheticfluorescence]

some hyper famous artists like Van Gogh transcend overratedness and become underrated because they're so normalized. Like I'll look at a van Gogh and I'm like wait this really is amazing you guys don't get it

[headspace-hotel]

Shakespeare is like this

[insufferablepirate]

Every time I see a Van Gogh that’s not one of his better known pieces it absolutely blows me away

Have you seen this shit my liege? smh unreal

[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 🥹

[nattousan]

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you

[nattousan]

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

[nattousan]

thanks for the reminder, kid

[nattousan]

at long last, we've reached the end...

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

i'll see y'all soon :')

[blastdamage]

the paris catacombs are 1000x more fucked up than i imagined

[blastdamage]

did you know the cops once found a fully functioning movie theater with a well-stocked bar inside the catacombs and they when they tried to go back later to formally investigate it was completely emptied out save for a note that read "don't search for us"

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Underground french cinema

[npd-vriska]

my little bro is part of the catacombs community and yeah, it's basically a fully autonomous society! enough that when my bro goes in on a friday night, they don't come out until monday for work- sometimes longer if they took days off.

some of the rooms have fully stocked pantries with cooking equipment, some have movies like the one described above, some have books you're allowed to just take but people always put back- every day people bring things from the outside. artists often set up galleries there. there are rooms with mattresses and hammocks set up for people to sleep. one of the room is just a place where people leave shoes for the fun of it.

this is Known, it's not a secret by any means. the catacombs are as big as paris itself, and people live there just as people live above. it's wonderful when you think about it.

[npd-vriska]

A little update! My little bro is now my little sister. Please don't misgender her :)

[enbylesbie]

[creaturey]

i think r/BenignExistence is my favorite subreddit 🥲 i love these pleasant little glimpses into strangers' lives

[hungwy]

Another reason why trains would be good is that most people are not good at driving

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

re ehrc guidance. which is not legally binding.

[homunculus-argument]

Rules of DIY:

if it's a skill, there's rules you can learn

if it's an art, rules are not your concern

make it fucked up or you won't make it

if it's already broken, you can't break it

anything can be fixed with gorilla glue

except for pleather, and also you

[bundibird]

7. You can experiment with DIYing everything EXCEPT FOR!! Electrical work, and pulling out that load bearing wall.

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

You will never be a mad scientist like the motherfuckers at r/macarons

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

Luckily this lady is just a pastry chef and not building death rays

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

The base Macaron is in itself a very technical task, and they're notorious for being difficult to bake. Lots of things can go wrong: your merengue can be the wrong texture, the merengue can refuse to foam up at all from trace oils in the bowl, the ingredients love to misbehave if they're not measured precisely, a shell can refuse to form or dry cracked, the oven can have weird drafts that make the cookies sag, your flavor ingredients can mess up the recipe, you can break the shell trying to release them from the tray, and so on. It's almost stupid hard to get consistently viable macarons, and these people practice a lot to get to this point.

Not to be deterred from the already difficult task of creating good macarons, these people are making experimental flavors, irregular shapes, complex designs, even handpainting designs with foodsafe watercolors. Sometimes for free.

I'm glad this kind of technical skill and dedication is put towards delicious cookies, because if these people were into making bioweapons or something instead, we'd all be so fucked

[creature-adjacent]

Carnivorous plants doin this is so funny to me

They don't wanna eat their pollinators :(

[questionablepastries]

[mobydyke]

being an adult is just dragging urself kicking and screaming to things that you will enjoy and that will be good for you

[mobydyke]

clenching my teeth and muttering under my breath "you'll be happy you did it you'll be happy you did it you'll be happy you did it" as I physically force myself out the door to go Do Things

[mobydyke]

being very firm with myself every time I think about bailing and saying "no. you committed to this. it will improve your quality of life. you will enjoy it. now put on your big boy pants and go."

[validblogname]

one fight at a time

[spontaneousmusicalnumber]

There are ten trillion pictures of flowering trees to the point where they sometimes seem trite and overdone. But then you see a tree in full flower and go holy shit this rules and I've gotta show this to everyone so they can experience the same magic and wonder and there are ten trillion and one pictures of flowering trees

[unwholesome-gay]