"It takes HOW LONG?" Black Hair is an Art (pt.2)

(This is part two of the hair lessons, focusing on writing/narratives. If you want to know how the styles LOOK, refer to part 1 and its addendum)

Now that you know what our hair actually looks like, we’re going to discuss incorporating that into your writing (original fic, fanfic, webcomics, anything with a narrative). You don’t HAVE to give us a dissertation on "how you studied 'The Black People’s Hair'" in your story. That’s not what I’m asking you to do. I’m just asking you to CONSIDER the effort and existence of it. The same way you put effort into discussing nonblack hair textures? Should be the sort of tenderness and care you put into discussing ours. It does not stand to reason that I have read thousands of stories describing "the silky, black/blonde tresses/waves that fell down their pale back as their lover ran their fingers through them", but Black readers have nothing of the sort to compare to without seeking our own authors out. Our hair deserves some loving and adoration too!

This is a very long post describing hairstyles and how they can correspond to your character's design and decisions, so I'll put a read more here. The sections are organized into 'Twist Out', 'Afros', 'Locs', 'Braids', 'Black Men', and 'Straight Hair' if you Ctrl F. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take your time to read all of this at some point though, as I put a lot of resources and explanation into this. I'm trusting you!

Before writing that Black queer &/or trans character, ask yourself:

Another set of resources that I've typed up for my upcoming lesson. I'm sure that even more questions could be asked; I hope that Black folk feel free to include their own additions in the tags! But these ought to be enough to at least get anyone to start self-reflecting during their creation/watching process!

What Strength Really Means 💪

Hey everyone, my name is Abdelmajed. I don’t usually talk much about myself, but today, I want to share a little piece of my story.

I was born and raised in Gaza, a place that has always been my home 🏡. I grew up surrounded by my family, my friends, and the streets that I knew like the back of my hand. Life wasn’t always easy, but we had love, laughter, and dreams. I used to think that no matter what happened, home would always be here. But life has a way of changing things in ways we never expect.

Over the past months, everything I once knew has disappeared. The streets that were once filled with children playing are now silent. The houses that held so many memories are now just rubble. And the people I loved—some of them are gone forever. 💔

And I'm now waiting to be Vetted by @gazavetters 🙏

I... I have nothing to say in my defence.......

but better late than never right!!

I've always loved long haired men with a tendency to look ethereal, so the unrendered Viktor with blonde hair hit the right spot in my heart

he doesn’t even look like himself anymore but I had to draw him like this otherwise I would have imploded

it’s so cool how the search function on every website, a technology that was essentially perfected over a decade ago, is borderline unusable now

5. Cilian Murphy: Tommy Shelby (Peaky Blinders 2013-2022)

hte real april foule… was you.

for thinkjghing I did not care abou you.

my friende.

Ooh. This is SO GEN X.... hopefully some of you younger ones will get it too.

I can't believe they left out the most important one...

Things We're Never Gonna Do:

Messing around with a brush. Drew a tree.

daylight savings is actually truly one of the most evil things in the world. just casually forcing us to confront the fact that time is fake while torturing insomniacs, autistics and schoolchildren across the globe. when will the agony end

ideas conceived by the truly deranged

America mostly observes DST, but landlocked Arizona does not, but inside Arizona is the Navajo Nation which DOES, but inside the Navajo Nation is the Hopi Reservation which DOES NOT.

Its worse when you realize that there's multiple layers of "Navajo nation inside Hopi Reservation, and Hopi Reservation inside Navajo nation" going on

The surrounding pink/brown is Arizona

The top right yellow corner is the Navajo nation

Any pink/brown inside the yellow corner is Hopi reservation

Any further yellow inside that is further pieces of the Navajo nation inside the Hopi reservation

And I think there's even a city or two inside those yellow pieces that are Hopi, but are too small to see on the map

I calculated once that you could travel in a straight line between two points in Arizona and have the current time change 10-12 times because of this

I had to find it. and yes, if you include the border between AZ and NM, you would have to change your clock a total of 12 times, or 11 if you're only counting time changes within state lines.

"Ripe for a baby boom?" Seriously?

The Heritage Foundation—a think tank behind Project 2025—thinks now is the perfect time for women to start having more babies. Their reasoning?

A record number of women in the US are in their early 30s, "the age at which women have the highest fertility rate." But they’re worried this "boom may be forgone altogether" because women are delaying marriage and prioritizing their own lives. According to them, "postponed fertility becomes forgone fertility"—as if women’s bodies exist to serve a birth rate quota. (Source: Newsweek)

Here’s a thought: instead of pushing women to have more kids, how about focusing on policies that support the ones already here? Affordable childcare, paid leave, healthcare, ...

But remember, this isn’t just a US issue. Across the world, reproductive rights are under attack.

Sign MY VOICE, MY CHOICE - because no government or think tank should decide what we do with our bodies.

Fuck this shit

Art by BlueSky user Adi Fitri

Hayao Miyazaki on AI

You might be frustrated by the library never having a complete manga collection on its shelves at any given time, but the 12 year old checking out 14 volumes of One Piece at once is vital to the library ecosystem. He's like the sea otter keeping the kelp forest from being devastated by an excess of sea urchins.

To those curious some other keystone library species include:

—the retirees who’ve read more murder mysteries than I’ve had hot meals

—the paperback romance girlies (gender neutral) who check out every single bodice ripper the second it hits the shelves

—the dads very slowly making their way through a ‘1001 movies to see before you die’ list

—the one-man criterion collection who checks out like, three movies per day and brings them back the next. (TV series are only a minor roadblock.)

—kids who like Minecraft

---The new parents checking out 47 picture books for their 7 month old baby who clearly has nothing going on in their head except the Wii Sports Resort theme song

it really is crazy how quickly people were willing to just let chatgpt do everything for them. i have never even tried it. brother i don't even know if it's just a website you go to or what. i do not know where chatgpt actually lives, because i can decide my own grocery list.

reblog to give your headache to elon musk instead

I’d just like to point out the growth in this post has mostly coincided with elon’s public spiral downward and I’d like to think we’re all a small part of that

bro can’t think because he’s just got a rager of a migraine 24/7

did you know that you can just not say something if you're white. you can just not talk. its okay. you dont have to write a paragraph worth of tags justifying why the reason you don't like rap 'isn't racist'. you dont have to apologize for being white. you can just not say anything and save yourself the humiliation. its alright. please take your hands off the keyboard