Finally finished Kseniya’s time skip design as part of her artfight character profile! Only took me two and a half months and a crushing deadline but we did it gang
I’ve never been in nyc but i feel like that would be such a vibe
I have to stress that Zohran Mamdani is, in fact, a naturalized citizen. The reactionaries are trying to move the overtone window to the point where the citizens of the USA are only those who are born on the USA soil to the parents who were already USA citizens (also by birth, since naturalization is not good enough). They are trying to make a second class citizens out of naturalized citizens where their status as a citizen can always be brought into question and their ability to do things that citizens born in the USA, like holding public office, is impossible.
Absolutely wild to me how sometimes you don’t even realize the way you’d been taught to perceive things as a kid was kinda fucked up, actually, until decades later.
Example:
As a kid, I constantly lived in fear of damaging shit in my parent’s house. The walls. The floors (especially the floors. The wood was beautiful. Shiny. But so easy to scratch). The cabinets.
As a sixteen-year-old, I once took my car to the dealership after work and paid a very dear sum of $250 ($10/hr cashier salary) to fix a slight scratch in the paint because I knew if my father saw it there would be hell to pay. It didn’t matter that I parked far out, like I’d been taught, and someone scratched it anyway. It was my fault. I failed in my duties as a steward of my vehicle.
Every time I scratched a rim on a curb while parallel parking or got a door ding or, god forbid, didn’t wash and vacuum that car every weekend, it was treated like some sort of moral failing.
Last year, when my husband and I first moved into our house, he scraped the side of our car when parking in our (Very Narrow) garage. When he told me, my first instinct was to be afraid for him. Like something terrible was going to happen to him because of this mistake. I urgently reassured him that it was okay, it was an accident, I wasn’t mad. Baffled, he was like, “Yeah? I know? Like, thank you for the reassurance, but I’m only a little annoyed, I’m not upset. It’s just a car.” And I had to take several minutes to process that. It’s…just a car.
We keep the car tidy. We maintain it. But we wash it maybe 4x a year. We only vacuum it after dirty road trips or when the dog hair starts to get annoying. It has scrapes and dings and the leather seats have stains. But that’s ok. Because it’s just a car.
This morning, I realized that a small rock had gotten embedded in the felt foot on one of our bar stools. Neither of us had noticed. There are now scratches on our beautiful hardwood floor. My immediate response was fear accompanied by a heavy measure of paralyzing guilt. “I’m so sorry,” I told my husband, “I should have noticed. I’ll figure out how to fix it, I swear. I can probably sand down that section and match the stain and–”
“Whoa, hey,” he said. “It was an accident. And it’s fine. Floors are going to get damaged. They’re floors. We live here. There was damage in places before we even bought the house, remember? It’s not a big deal. It’s just a floor.” Right. It’s just a floor. Right.
My husband’s mom is visiting and this afternoon, as I was sitting in the kitchen looking at the scratches on the floor, I offhandedly asked her if my husband had ever broken or damaged anything as a kid. “Of course,” she said. Household items. A TV. A wrecked car during his teen years. I asked how she punished him.
“Why would I punish him for things like that?” she said. “They were all accidents.”
I can’t put into words how dispiriting it is to watch all these plus size idols, celebrities, drag queens thin. The body positive movement wasn’t perfect, but we had made some progress. I watched Lizzo dance and flute in front of me and near cried. Watched mid-fat girls flourish in their new comfortable bodies now that they could breathe. Watched plus-size drag queens show they too could be sexy and not just a joke.
But Ozempic and weight loss drugs have snatched people up one by one. For every one there’s some reason it’s justified (oh, they did the work, oh but they might be pre diabetic, oh well they might need it though). Or there’s a celeb who lies about not taking it then admits they have.
And for every one of those, there’s a kid or woman watching who thinks it’s just supposed to be that easy to lose weight. Who thinks there’s something wrong with her if she can’t shed her body.
It’s the understudied weight loss drug of our generation, no different from the pills of before. In 20, 30 years we’ll be talking about all the side effects or failures and it will be a shame.
But that won’t come before a generation of young girls, boys, kids have to endure the big back jokes and Ozempic commercials and the internalization of the idea that skinny is healthy and skinny is what we should be and skinny is what is natural, and all big-boned and bodied girls could be skinny and happier and somehow better tomorrow if they just had the money and the prescription.
Anyway, go read some Aubrey Gordon and Kate Manne, please please please. Educate yourselves about fatness & fatphobia and be kind to yourselves and each other.
saw a video that was like “everybody comment what you did today so we can see how everyone experienced something different” and the comments have me tearing up on this train. what the fuckkkk. the human experience
mannn. what ever
I bought guitar strings and had a fried chicken sandwich for lunch
I took an x ray and played with a kitten!
I helped my mom tend to her vegetable garden
had my last DND session with a DM I’ve had for 2 years
Made toast with every type of jam in my fridge for dinner
I finally got back to writing some short stories!
Shared a teapot with a beloved friend. 💜
I took my brother who’s visiting me for the first time in over a year to a bakery and my favorite Japanese restaurant and then took him to the airport. I miss him already
