Arcticbluebird - He Take A Big Steppy

As a nonbinary person I am begging begging BEGGING people to stop enforcing gender on things that don't need it, assigning gender to hobbies, food choice, ability, personality traits etc.

"Girl dinner", "the feminine urge", "the masculine urge", "cottagecore is for women, dark academia is for men", "I want to fuck him like if he was a woman and I was a man", "this man is so fruity he is a girl to me I refuse to see him as a man". I'm sure many of you use it ironically but there's also a handful of people that really go downhill with sexism they haven't reflected on and it bleeds into real life.

It hurts Everyone, it reinforces misogyny and homophobia, but also I just want to say that it reinforces transphobia as well.

I really don't want to keep existing in a society that keeps trying to shove me into a box or asking me questions like "so are you a man kind of nonbinary or a woman kind of nonbinary eyes emoji". It's frustrating to see dates asking my nonbinary butch friend "so like, are you a trans man or are you still a woman" and remember how I had similar experiences unless I dated another trans person. And I'm saying all this as a genderfluid guy, I want to be genderfluid on my own terms.

These experiences go beyond dating, obviously, but I want to keep this post short-ish.

Reinforcing cishet gender values hurts everyone and it hurts nonbinary people also.

And I'm sure trans men and trans women also have plenty to say about this (which I'm not, so feel free to add your perspective in replies/reblogs/asks if you are)

And when other LGBT people do it it feels like a backstab.

No you cannot fix your entire life at 2am. Go to bed.

lahore pigeons are some of the most visually appealing birds out there. like in terms of visual design. very minimalist, good contrast.

:)

(message comes from friend of bees @ellieofthewoods )

Composition by Muffet,1932. Recorded Circa 1933 in Underground Studios®. 

Mandolin: Papyrus

Melodica: Sans

Guitar: Asriel

Knife: Chara

Bass: Undyne

Drums: Muffet

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

My latest cartoon for New Scientist

Just to make a point, every time I finished a panel of this I would export it as a PNG on the perceptual setting and use it as a color reference for the next panel

IT'S BAD

PLEASE CHECK YOUR COLOR SETTINGS

EDIT: If you're still having problems, it might help to switch from "Save/Save as" to "Export (as a) Single Layer". Just. Make SURE the box labeled "Expression Color" is set to RGB. I've been messing with this all day, and it looks like this combination of settings will allow exported PNGs to maintain their colors perfectly. To you. So far both Discord and Toyhouse still only display desaturated images and I cannot for the life of me figure out why

literally most things that people write off as just ‘textures’ to use in graphics are stolen & unsourced material created by artists or photographers NOT meant to be used as elements in projects without royalty payments. you can say ‘it’s just random tumblr posts they don’t care’ but you wouldn’t want someone to take your work and edit into their work so they can be praised for their beautiful style and creativity even if they just post it on social media w/o profit, would you?? so maybe if you browse pinterest or google images for pictures without finding the original source, you’re using images that you’re not allowed to use without realizing it.

you see it on here a lot especially in (i won’t link anything but i’m sure you know what i mean) those album track ‘aesthetics’ posts, au ‘aesthetic’ posts (ie where people use ‘pinterest-y’ images to kinda craft a visual au), and even just rather typical graphics that have a lot of ‘texture’ elements. and texture packs too!! that’s often where the problem starts; people just collect images (often literal art), compile them in a folder w/o sources, then insist no one can repost those images w/o crediting the person who compiled them. what???

SO may i suggest some of my fave places you can get FREE, ROYALTY-FREE elements that are totally legal to use

creativemarket has 6 free high-quality resources (textures, brushes, fonts, etc), different every week! wow awesome i check it every week

search ‘freebie’ on behance. awesome stuff!!! lots of v nice templates textures and fonts

mockup zone freebies

unsplash: tons of very nice free photographs, not shitty stock photos

pexels: same idea. + they have an adobe plugin so you can get photos without closing your editor damn nice

as to not make this too long: spoongraphics, lostandtaken (textures galore), pixeden, freebiesbug.