saralitek @saralitek - Tumblr Blog

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merwild

The Witch

I fell in love with Manon the moment she appeared. I couldn’t help it.

merwild

My version of Vash The Stampede. I did this for myself and for the friend who introduced me to Trigun.

merwild

Sharingan!

WIP of my first drawing of the year.

via

DAVID STENBECK

AuDHD adult here with my 2 cents. There are so many aspects of our lives and brains that we can’t control or even figure out at times. I hyperfixate with stationary often too and what I’ve learned is that in that moment I need to be able to control the outcome of something in my life. And all the dedication that goes into deciding what THE perfect pen is going to be and then the satisfaction I get when I finally have it…. I realise that I needed those feelings more than the pen. So I usually give into it and enjoy the ride, the research, the excitement, the completion of something from start to finish. I don’t know how I would feel if my hyperfixation was cars or something really expensive, but if it’s something I can afford I just do it. Sometimes I prolong the process too, investigate even more on purpose to maybe give more time to the actual chaos that is going on outside my pen search to settle down a bit. And then with my new pen in hand I have a confidence boost that helps me with real life. This is obviously just my experience, and I don’t have a bunch of strangers judging my every move, but thought I’d share since I tortured myself over it when I was younger. Sending you lots of positive thoughts

this is one of those ones that i honestly might print and pin to the wall above my desk. truly helpful, thank you for taking the time and for sharing. i really appreciate it

#mental health

love-me-love-my-weirdness

Shout out to the ten year old who just got diagnosed. Shout out to the housebound fourteen year old. Shout out to the eighteen year old who can’t go to the university they wanted. Shout out to the twenty two year old who can’t get a job. Shout out to the twenty six year old with a caretaker. Shout out to the thirty year old who can’t buy their own house.

Shout out to young disabled people. We exist.

#mental health

petite-gloom

for anyone else feeling angsty on a tuesday evening ☠️

#mental health

frozensoba

a buncha fishies i drew on heavypaint

#art inspiration #art

sleepimali

Available as a print and sticker set this month only (November 2023) on my Patreon for Professional Napper patrons and above :)<3

As a warning, this month’s lore deals pretty heavily with death and trauma, and has mentions of war (in the past).

Shadowlings and No Magic Zones lore:

If you find yourself in a place where traces of humans are slowly being reclaimed by nature, marked by a glaringly red and yellow coloured sign that says “NO MAGIC” on it, odds are you’re standing at the site of an old battleground from the Long War.

No matter where you go, if there are humans around, you can likely find a no magic zone there too. And the reason magic is disallowed in such places is because they are the dwellings of the Shadowlings, who are said to be soldiers that fell to a curse in the war, and hence harbour very negative emotions towards those who use it. Fear, anger, grief… And all explosive feelings at that. They aren’t exactly capable of rational thinking anymore, so it’s best not to upset them, especially since they tragically harbour a lot of the Wild Magic they resent so much, and can be incredibly dangerous while emotional.

Because of their experiences that live on inside them, it doesn't matter that magic has now become a good and necessary force in human society, or that magic folks and humans have both done equal amounts of good and bad.

Using magic in their presence truly can only be done at the risk of your life for most people, and the exceptions to that rule can be counted on the fingers of just one hand.

However if you do not provoke them, they are completely harmless and very gentle - loving even.

Being a Shadowling is leading an existence that hovers between life and death, unable to participate in life, but also unable to move on from it. And yet a Shadowling is not quite a ghost either.

As newly turned, most Shadowlings retain an almost human shape, but they slowly begin lose their shape and memories with the passage of time, except for a few exceptions who hold onto them as much as possible for the sake of their loved ones.

Still, they know instinctively that they were once humans and therefore tend to seek them and their warmth out as much as possible. In the absence of humans though, they feel the safest around human-made objects that have been left behind in the zone, and with each other. Shadowling are rarely alone, instead they tend to huddle together in big groups where they do their best to comfort each other and help each other hold onto their memories, and dream of the day they’ll be able to return to humanity.

For quite some time after the end of the war, those who lived on would take care of the Shadowlings and the areas in which magic was forbidden. After all, no matter how unrecognisable they had become, they were still people’s beloved family members, lovers, and friends. And if you look into their eyes, regardless of how much they have lost, you can still see and know who they were in life.

But time is ruthless to us all, and the last living generation who survived the horrors of the war has grown old and started to disappear. For some time, their descendants would take care of the no magic zones instead, but the vast majority of these places would slowly become completely abandoned with the introduction of magic in human society.

And so, the Shadowlings kept getting more and more shapeless and wispy, clinging to the traces of humanity they can find in items that were left behind and the occasional visitor.

Few people visit these days. And even fewer still are visitors who still do not have traces of magic on them or aren’t afraid of the Shadowlings.

But maybe one day, as long as there is hope, maybe one day their curse can be lifted.

And until then, the Shadowlings will find ways to keep existing and experience joy and love even with all that they have lost.

#watercolour art #art

nosebleedclub

How do you feel about yourself?

inkskinned

i got upset in therapy today, which isn't like me. usually i am laughing through the bad things. rather than cry about it, i held up my handmade halloween costume. i'm going as a sunset.

i threw my back out again, and what they don't tell you about a slipped disc is that it kind of feels like your spine is leaking hot fluid into your body. like a car engine.

i have more plants than i can count. i've killed a lot of them in the past year living here, since we don't get the right sunlight for it. i used to live in a room that got sun through every hour of the day. i dragged a 50 pound table up two flights of stairs into my breakfast nook and then painted it by hand to look like green jade. this was during the time i should have broken up with her; because my apartment almost got broken into, and she was angry when i asked if i could crash at hers for the night.

i do my work most of the time, unless it's a longterm goal. i should really clean the rug. i have been in therapy for 2 years and am still discovering the ways i have been used like a pincushion. yuck.

i think maybe i don't have a personality and i am just trying on the shapes of people and whichever one doesn't disgust me is good enough for keeping. i can't pretend that this choice is easy; because usually i choose people that are loveable and charming. today if i am a person she has her arms at the wrong angles, and her back is thrown out. i am gonna try to make a stop at party city and put my pale hands onto expensive decorative things i will not purchase. i spent too much money on the dog they neglected.

they did neglect the dog, though. i was talking about it before kate made me almost-cry. i have been babysitting him while they cruise the ocean. he returns home on friday. my immediate reaction was but i really can't take him permanently, he hurts my back, and i don't have enough space or money -

kate held up her hand. is there a reason that you believe you're the one who has to resolve everything?

here is how i feel about myself: genuinely i believe that a grain of sand is only important in the context of a world without a beach. which is to say that i probably overwhelm my apartment's sink disposal. sometimes for fun when they raise the rent i think about pouring paint into their plumbing, but it's not worth the microplastics in the ecosystem.

i don't! is the thing. i just don't. why would i bother? it is easier to feel in love with the sunlight through leaves. it is easier to be in a museum after dark. recently i've been listening to a lot of dimension 20. recently i've been journaling, but i'm fundamentally bored by all of the secrets i've been telling.

i think the problem is linguistics. i feel a lot of things, probably, even if i feel them a little to the left. and i really do have a strong sense of myself, and honestly i don't mind her. she's nice enough. creative. tough. this is one of those questions that my neurodivergence never manages to correctly analyze. i am fine with myself, i have to be. she's, like. fine.

the problem is that when things go wrong, that girl isn't me. it isn't me in the panic attack or driving the car into the side of the truck or forgetting her meds. it isn't me being always-late to things. i am someone tolerable and kind; fun and flirty. i am funny and sweet. there is somebody i rebuke, just, like, ruining my life from a corner of my body. biblically accurate angel; i have 23 eyes staring out from inside me. the thing that i-am-not is constantly trying to fucking kill me.

the internet usually posits self-love as like, a choice to be making. but when i settle into a mug of tea, that's me taking care of the real-me, not the little demon self. when i shower for a long time or go for a walk or make a good meal: the good-me deserves this, and she receives it. she is putting up with the actual devil.

it's not like i can forgive the bad parts of me, she's not going to change her behavior. and how exactly can i come to terms with that, huh? with what poem? this isn't how i raised myself. what even is the point in making a fuss. just try to minimize the damage and eventually go and clean up.

they neglected this dog so much that i have been combing him out for 24 straight hours and have pulled 2 full trashbags of fur off him. i would never suggest shaving a double-coated dog, but his fur had impacted and i had to remove these inch-thick blankets of hair from his hindquarters. a dead bug tumbled out. he spent a summer like that, which horrifies me. no wonder he struggled with his breathing.

i guess if i am a person i'm just a solution, is the thing. like, i make my own problems, and then this is the version that solves them. like i am always apologizing for the mess. like i have to make up for the rest of it, for the issues that will arise whether or not i like it. there is no longterm solution to certain symptoms. you just have to resolve your life around it; a bitter equation of checks and balances. it's not that i don't ask for help - it's that i never recognize that help is an option. isn't it just, like, easier to do it yourself?

i had a nightmare that i drank the matted fur by accident. when i woke up, for a second, i thought i had become the dog, going home on friday. ironically the problem was that i was medically suffocating: i developed asthma in childhood after my father smoked continuously under my room.

it was a direct result of neglect.

#mental health