Inactive Blog

Aesop’s Fables

I think that we as a society should get more comfortable with the idea that sometimes our friends will be attracted to us and sometimes we will be attracted to our friends and nothing needs to come of that.

You don't have to date. You don't have to stop being friends. You can just keep hanging out. Self control and respect exists.

And sometimes you will date your friend and figure out that your dynamic worked better when you were friends. And then you can go back to being friends. It's really quite simple. Mature and cool, even.

revisiting the "comics as a self-love exercise" thing i did a few years ago. (u can read the first one here, cw for discussions of death + suicide.)

thank u for hanging in there. u did really good.

Does Izzy DESERVE two big strong boyfriends? No. Does he WANT two big strong boyfriends? Also no. 

the real question is how many people have *you* admitted you have a crush on to

mostly my career goals are to hang out with friends and do whatever is funniest in the moment. hope that helps

i love that post thats like “never trust how you feel about your life after 9pm” that shit changed my life. every time i feel bad i look at the clock and i’m like Aha It’s 10:26 PM You Cannot Fucking Fool Me

edit: if you want to tag this with some variation on “but i feel bad during the day,” read this to understand what i’m really saying here. also, please stop putting triggering content in my notes

check out literally just sitting outside if u can. the hobby of the summer

Keep reading

I’ve been microdosing T for two months and so far I’m just damp and pimply 🙃

quick warm-up sketch from my digital sketchbook

raise yr hand if you just resigned yourself to uncomfortable underwear when you were a kid because you thought that’s just how life was

Keep reading

Thinking about Frenchie, Oluwande and Roach as names... And both the tragedy and the privilege of being mixed/having lighter skin

Out of the three Black men in the Revenge, Oluwande is the only one who has a real name. He's also the only one who has a last name (Boodhari). That, paired with the fact that he seems utterly unused to experiencing racism (his shock at the french person's comment during the party) and the fact that he's the darkest-skinned one out of the three, makes me think that Oluwande probably came from a relatively safe Black community. Maybe a quilombo or maybe he's African and from a tribe that hadn't been torn to shreds before he was born. Either way, Oluwande comes from a place where he's fully human; he has a last name, he has a real name. He knows what it's like to live relatively unaware of how much white people hate him

(Which is then, of course, lost; and because he didn't grow up in that environment, and because he is so dark-skinned, he is the most vulnerable one now, and the one who, in the eyes of white people, needs to be put in his place the most. I want to make it very clear that I'm not trying to imply Oluwande is privileged here; but he is in a unique position as a person of color, especially in that time, and that comparison makes the violence the other two went through even more visible)

Compare that to Roach. Roach as a name is so utterly horrifying, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth every time I talk about him. Which I think is absolutely intentional. It's racism in its purest form, and you have to be uncomfortable about it. You can't talk about Roach without thinking, to some level, about the horrors of racism and colonization

And also... Roach doesn't have a last name

This, of course, tracks down historically - enslaved people were denied their last names. And having no last name while living in the Western world is having no history, no family, no origin. It's being denied community and family and culture and richness. Someone without a last name is alone in Western society. And someone named Roach and only Roach... Well, they're nothing. From the moment Roach was born, as a dark-skinned Black man who definitely came from a colonized environment, he was put in his place as less-than

And then you have Frenchie. Frenchie was named after the people who colonized his people, and that is fucking awful. Especially considering that Frenchie also doesn't have a last name. So no connection to his own history or culture; all that's left is the culture that hates him. Frenchie was born to be assimilated: forget your culture, forget your roots, spend your whole life trying to be like your colonizer

Except, of course, you'll never actually be accepted by them. He's not a Frenchman. He's Frenchie. It's derisive, it's scornful. Forget who you are, but don't forget that you're also not really one of us. Embrace us, but remember, we won't embrace you

(And if you've studied French colonial history - or read Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon - you know that the fact that he's named after France absolutely cannot be a coincidence. That was the modus operandi of French colonialism down to the bone. Give your colonized French status, force them to trade their culture for yours, assimilate them in such a way that they might actually believe they are indeed Frenchmen; but never see their lives as equal or them as real Frenchmen)

So, Frenchie's name is a tragedy and also leaves a horrible taste of colonialism, of culture denial, of assimilationism in my mouth. It reminds me of my own grandfather being taken away from his people and taking years to even find out the name of his tribe; it's horrible, and painful in a way that's hard to even put into words

At the same time, he's not Roach

Because Frenchie is also too light-skinned to be anything that isn't mixed, and so his name doubles - it's about colonialism and assimilationism, yes, but it's also being closer to being acceptable to white society. Frenchie can be a Frenchman, kinda; there is some space for him, if he forever accepts the abuse and violence that comes with not being white in that environment. Roach isn't even offered this choice; his skin is not light enough for him to be human in the colonizer's eyes. He could never be seen as even on the vicinity of French men. To them, he's just a roach

It's a good balance, I think, of tackling the privilege of light skin versus the horrible lack of belonging and the fact that said privilege is born out of violence that's carved on your skin into the bone. A commentary made even better by the presence of Oluwande, reminding us that the best thing to be is neither Roach nor Frenchie - the best thing to be is Oluwande Boodhari, a full person, with a real name, with a family and history and a sense of belonging; and who's not used to being treated as lesser than. And in that, OFMD also reminds us to have solidarity, and to not aim for crumbs of acceptance, but for the whole thing

(In this setting, Oluwande feels almost like a fantasy. Being whole, being unused to violence, having history and pride as a person of color. Which again, is not to say he's privileged, because as the darkest-skinned one he's the biggest target. But there's something... Just amazing about seeing this man be so whole despite that)

And it's really a nice balance of drawing solidarity while also pointing out privilege; having both what makes them similar and what makes them different; pointing out that no violence is better or acceptable; and encouraging that people band together instead of tearing each other apart. Plus commentary on history, racism, and assimilationism. It's really so well done, and it blows my mind that they managed to fit so much commentary into nothing but their names

Hope you don't mind me taking your tags because I actually forgot to talk about this!

So I want to first point out an important distinction, which is that those names are ostensibly and clearly nicknames and pirate names. We know that BlackBeard's legal name is Edward Teach. We know that Buttons' name is Nathaniel (the seagull, Olivia, calls him that). We know that Black Pete chose his own pirate name, and that his legal name is, presumably, Peter. We know that the Gentleman Pirate is Stede Bonnet and that he chose that for himself; we even know that Wee John's legal name is John Feeney despite him being probably the most minor character in the whole crew. And even Oluwande himself has a nickname, as he's called Olu, but we still know his full name is Oluwande Boodhari

With Frenchie and Roach, we have nothing to call them but Frenchie and Roach. Those might be nicknames, they might not; I'm not saying they are definitely their legal names (I think they probably don't have legal names, since they don't have last names, but that's conjecture on my part). But it doesn't actually matter whether or not they are, because they are the only thing they are ever called, and that makes those, for all intents and purposes, their names. It doesn't matter if those are nicknames or not because they are reduced to these names, and as Black men living in the Western world, these names cannot be detached from their identities and the racism they face, and the history behind their every existence

The only other character who has a nickname whose name we never learn is The Swede, and the Swede is probably the most minor character other than Wee John. His only plotline is when he gets scurvy and even then he has like, 3 lines about it. He doesn't get a name outside of his nickname, but that makes sense because the Swede is that guy you don't know very well who's a friend of a friend; you don't learn much about him. Frenchie and Roach are way more relevant/present characters, and even other characters who are less relevant than them, but white (such as Wee John) explicitly have other names

So basically the options here are either that those are the only names they ever had, or that they are nicknames. And nicknames are usually given by other people, and in this context, most likely white people. And upon receiving these nicknames, their other names ceased to exist, and they never got to be anything but Roach and Frenchie again

Both of these options circle back to my analysis, which is that they have been reduced to these names due to racism, and that this is commentary on racism, colorism, and colonialism

There is also a third option, which is that they chose those names for themselves; I don't tend to think that's the case but that's my gut feeling. I definitely don't think Frenchie would have chosen this name for himself, especially considering his derision for colonizers. But even if they did, then this means that these facts about their identities (Roach's less-than-ness and Frenchie's liminar place as both a Frenchman and someone who could never be a real Frenchman) are so important to them they became their most important sense of self, and what they identify themselves by. This also cannot be detached from the lives they have lived as Black men in the Western world

So basically, the history behind how they got these names and the legal status of the names may vary, but it doesn't matter because it's still the direct result of the racial and cultural context they were raised in, and the specific types of violence they have faced in this environment

What do you consider the pillars of your diet? Like not what you consider the most delicious, or even necessarily your "favorite" food, but the food that if you look within your heart and are honest with yourself actually eat more often than anything else? I think mine is toast, broccoli, and eggs

Man I love Izzy Hands. This little dude is so funny. He’s the most homophobic character in the whole show but he’s also very much gay. He moaned ‘daddy’ completely unprompted. He’s not even that short but everyone else is taller than him so he looks tiny all the time. He curses multiple times in every sentence. He has the energy of an angry purse dog. He has That Voice. He’s been pining over a false image of his boss for years. He thought he overheard said boss having sex with a random guy and literally cried about it. He was forced to eat his own severed toe and he kinda liked it. His name is fucking Hands.

the way tumblr is treating taika waititi is so fucking annoying he won't fix the mcu he won't make hollywood gay he's one guy. he didnt even make ofmd. like i absolutely get liking the shit he makes i love it too!! im even gonna subject myself to an mcu movie and watch thor 4 coz i like his style so much!!! but people neeed to stop putting celebs on pedestals like this because sooner or later he WILL fuck up and do something that'll immediately make everyone label him problematic coz he's just some guy!!! like he's a real human being holy shit why do we have to do this with a new man every month.

we're speed running the lin manuel mirandaification of this guy