I feel like this is appropriate
If I had a nickel for every time two sciencey guys had a situationship where one of them died and got better, then turned into a Jesus figure and the other had to do a internal battle against loneliness and choose to help the person who had hurt him really badly, and then the world goes bad and the human one has to convince the Jesus figure not to end the world and then they die(?) in the gayest way possible I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Gentle reminder: “bear witness” means “learn about what’s happening, so you can talk about it, agitate for change, and help where you can”
Not “you must watch X number of snuff films and look at X number of dead children, in order to be a good person”
this panel haunts me. He has no right looking this peaceful. He has no right looking this comforting. And that fucking line. You don’t get to say that Walter. Especially since it’s fucking true
Not a woman myself, but dang if I don’t empathize with this. Every time I hear people talking about how not having any close relationships is a red flag, it just deepens this feeling like my life has been irreparably fucked up and there’s no fixing it. And like, I know it’s not true and it’s never too late and all that, but damn if it’s not hard to stay convinced of that sometimes.
Being a girl without close girl friends I spend time with feels like some sort of spiritual jail I've been put in for this particular lifetime and it's such a walk of shame in this day and age like I can't count how many reels or tiktoks I see of girls saying stuff like "girls who don't have girl friends??? RED FLAG!!!" Or like jokes about when you befriend the girl who has no girl friends and then you realize why...yikes! Cause she sucks and is toxic and unlovable! And I'm like ouch, that's tough to hear. I know those narratives are popular because girl friendships can be painful and I'm sure there's lot of people out there who have been deeply unkind whether on purpose or not but I guess it pains me to watch people make laughable comments about lonely women. I feel like being a lonely woman is such a derogatory notion already deeply imbedded in society and sexism that I feel like it's just sort of being reframed in the new age as like "she did that to herself" and that's never true, we are all the result of the love we get or don't and it's definitely our own responsibility how we act and how we heal or don't - but it feels so judgmental sometimes to further "other" women who don't have friends
Thread from Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez on her experience in a hospital in Cuba
This is now the only correct reading of that acronym
I read a fic yesterday that focused on body dysmorphia while establishing the importance of gender affirming care and disavowing violence and bigotry towards trans people
and then said that fear and distrust of men is inherent to the afab body rather than a learned and reinforced behavior
think you might still have some stuff to unpack there bud
ahhh my metroid dna is acting up ahhhh it’s making me want to kiss girls
Congratulations on finishing Arc 1! I've been following this comic since pretty much the beginning (I remember when everyone thought Alinua was a cat girl because of how her ears looked under her hood). This comic has come a long way since then, and it's been a pleasure and inspiration to watch your journey!
So with Arc 1 done, how do you feel? Any thoughts about the early days of the comic, or some lessons you've learned? What are you most looking forward to in Arc 2?
(Side note- thank you for Erin. My brain chews on him regularly and I gave a presentation on him in speech class. He brings me immense joy)
Whoof! I feel like it's slowly sinking in, tbh. I'm pretty bad at appreciating my own accomplishments - I have a tendency to Fire And Forget to avoid getting bogged down by "oh I'd have done this better now" or "eek I don't like how I did that" or "oh no this aged badly" or "what if I just redid it but Better this time" - but I've gotten better at accepting all those things as Not The End Of The World and they do not make me a Bad Artist or Bad Person, and as a result, I'm able to look back and just be happy about this one. It's an odd feeling.
At some point in the last several chapters I decided the ending of Arc 1 needed to feel like a conclusion. Not a full series finale, but a season finale. Character arcs needed to hit points of resolution; setup needed to pay off; cool moves needed to get some airtime. It's not in my nature to end stories, but as I worked on this arc I got comfy with the idea that an ending wasn't mechanically locking in the last part of a story and saying Nothing Past This Point, it was resolving the major elements of the story that cried out for completeness. Stories can have many endings before they're actually done, and in order for Arc 1 to feel like a complete thing, I knew it needed to bring those dangling plot threads home.
The fun thing about resolving chunks of the plot is those resolutions open the door for entirely new problems, and I'm excited to play with those! Part of why I wanted to make sure I had the rest of the year off was so I could take my time and just sit in the new status quo, because freeform creative idea-spinning is my favorite part of the writing process, and it's a rare treat for me to have such a wide-open swath of possibility ahead of me.