Rhes

I close my eyes for a long time. When I open them again, the girl in the mirror is still there. "The metaphor is falling apart," she says. "The imagery is breaking down."

"You knew this would happen," I tell her. "Everyone knew this would happen," she corrects me. "It's only a matter of time. You can't keep running from this forever. You can't keep asking the girl in the bathroom mirror to fix things for you when you're still too scared to break them to begin with."

"So? How was your first day at work?" she asks me. Her mouth doesn't move. It's all in the subtitles and the subtext. "Was it so bad?"

"It could be worse," I tell her. And I'm not lying. It could be worse. I stared back at the stares all day. I waited for someone to say something cruel because it's easy. I held my customer service smile like a knife in my jaw. "I have a 30 minute break. That's nice."

"That's nice," the girl in the mirror agrees. "So, is it time yet?" she asks. I pause. She's never asked me that before.

"Everyone is being so nice," she continues. "So understanding. They're all waiting for you. They're saying there's no pressure, to take your time. They'll all be here for you whenever you're ready. So is it time yet?"

I still don't know what to say. "It's just--"

"I know it's frustrating. I know how much you hate how they all know. That you don't get the luxury of privacy in this. But how much longer are you going to make me wait? Everyone except you is ready. Why isn't it time yet? I'm ready. I know it'll all break. But I'm ready. I've been ready. Is it time yet?"

I try and let her down gently. "It's not a good time," I say sadly. "The new job. The new town. It's all just...a bit too much right now. Just a little longer. I mean, I'm talking to you now. I'm willing to admit you exist. That's progress, right?"

"Is that progress you're happy with?" the girl who waits for me in the bathroom mirror asks dubiously. "Is that progress you're satisfied with?"

I don't know how to respond to that. "See?" the girl in the bathroom mirror says. She's tired. We're both tired. We will both continue to be tired. "It's not time yet. Still not midnight."

"It's past midnight," I say.

"It is," the girl I have done everything I could to ignore replies. She's lying with me in my bed. She's staring at the same dead fly. "Do you trust me?"

"Why are you asking? You already know. You already said so. The imagery is breaking down. The metaphor has fallen apart. I don't get the luxury of pretending this is anything other than what it is anymore." I tell her, bitter like a good froth of matcha.

"Because this isn't just about us," she says. "You made this a story that other people can read. You made this into a narrative because you couldn't keep being quiet about it. But you aren't ready for this yet, still, are you?"

"No," I say. She hears me crying about it and is polite enough not to try and wipe away the tears. "I'm sorry. I know I'm letting you all down."

"No," she says back. "There's always other midnights. I can always wait a little longer. At least you're willing to admit I'm here, now. That's a start."

"Right," I say. "There's always other midnights."

"Sleep tight, baby girl. There'll always be worse monsters in the morning. But I'll be there even then."

"I know," I whisper.

"You've always known."

"I know that, too."

"I know. Go to sleep. There'll be other narratives in the morning, too."

"Okay."

You remember how it sounds, how your parents say it, how your friends say it- you learn how to spell it, and maybe even what it means and why it was given to you, and it's yours.

It's not a tangible, physical thing, like your hair or your fingernails, but it's yours. It belongs to you.

So, like. Imagine there comes a point in life where everyone gets their name tattooed to their forehead, or something.

Could be when they're two. Could be when they're twenty. Hell, it could be when they're eighty, or ninety-nine, or whenever. But it's everybody, and it's inevitable, and it happens.

Now imagine the time comes for you, and you get up after and look in the mirror and realize they spelled it wrong.

And you have to go outside and live your life in a world where everybody is so totally used to knowing people's names on sight that not a single person second-guesses that your parents named you Susam, or Ahley, or Benjabib.

And you know it's wrong, every time you hear it, but you can choose to explain every single time- every time you're called in a coffee queue, every time a teacher picks you in class, every time you meet a new person or bump into a stranger or are greeted on the street, by children and employers and door-to-door salesmen and your fucking waitress- or you can kind of just learn to grit your teeth and ignore it.

You still notice, of course- maybe you learn to accept it, maybe you hate it every time, but whether you do anything about it or not, you still know. You know people have the wrong word for you in your head.

You know they still mean YOU, but it's not you.

So what's your solution?

Do you shrug, decide it doesn't matter, and go about your life?

Do you smear the typo over with foundation, pencil in new letters every morning?

Do you stare into the mirror sometimes and think, "wow, I should really get that fixed"?

Maybe you save up your money and get it removed, or covered up, or changed to something else. Maybe the whole damn thing was wrong, and you've been a Jacob running around as a Hailey this whole damn time.

That's the best way to explain it. It's not an easily-provable thing, or a demonstrable thing, or a feeling I can one-for-one substitute as something else-

Reblog if you’re polyamorous/open to polyamory in the future/in a polycule or open to one/interested in polyamory I want to see how many of us there are

when I drew this comic 3 years ago I had NO idea how far it would reach. I'm happy to finally share a corrected version with proper abbreviations, and even MORE state names of indigenous origin ♥️

however, the goal of this comic was to inspire people to do your OWN research on indigenous history. To question everything we have been taught, and everything that has been pointedly left out. This erasure, this “forgetting”, of history is not just of the past… it is happening now. - Across so-called Canada, the US, and US-occupied islands, native women are victims of murder at 10-12x the rate of non-native people, and are the most likely to go missing without being searched for by the law. - Native reservations have the highest rates of poverty in the US, with over HALF of tribal homes with no access to clean water (with more joining this list by the year) - Native people are 6-10x more likely to be unhoused than the rest of the population, and native teens suffer suicide rates higher than any other demographic. This list of modern day genocide goes on (thank you for compiling @theindigenousanarchist <3) and yet take a look at those environmental stats!

Native people manage to do SO much for the planet as a whole - thanklessly - and with all this stacked against them. Don't even get me started on kin fighting in south america. Could you imagine if there was help? #landback is resistance to genocide, and it is the key to saving our warming earth.

So look into it and the other hashtags, cuz a cartoon goose ain't a substitute for a proper education. Love to my grandparents who always kept a map of tribal territories of turtle island on their wall, to speaking on our Tsalagi & Saponi heritage. Love & solidarity forever, happy research, and happy #indigenouspeoplesday

LANDBACK.ORG

Their attack, which took place on 27 March 1943, was partially successful, and they managed to destroy 800,000 identity cards, and retrieve 600 blank cards and 50,000 guilders. The building was blown up and no one was caught on the night of the attack. However, due to an unknown betrayer, Arondéus was arrested on 1 April 1943. Arondéus refused to give up the rest of his team.

Arondéus was openly gay before the war and defiantly asserted his sexuality before his execution. His final words were:

"Tell the people that homosexuals are not by definition weak."

“Where is the light coming from?” “The same place as the music.” Andrew Lesnie, Cinematographer of LOTR

How & Why It's A Problem

If I had to summarize the frustration I have with this topic in one image, I'd use JeCorey Holder's (queer Black creative!) meme:

Now here's the thing. I'm not saying you have to be a master at lighting. I'm surely not. Hell, I still play around with lighting in my art in ways that aren’t the ‘most realistic’. You can’t ask me the technical explanations behind ‘color theory’ or 'contrast' without me doing some more reading. However… I don’t think anyone needs an art degree to understand this point:

We should be able to SEE your brown skinned Black characters!

I brought this up in my lessons about skin tones and blushing, and it applies with lighting as well. If all of your other characters have focused light and shadows, so should your Black characters.

However, this does NOT mean making them lighter-skinned!!!!

It's not funny nor logical at all to suggest that they somehow can't be seen like your other characters when you’re the one creating the piece. It's like a classic fifth-grade racist joke, “You blend in at night”. Har-de-har.

I was once rudely told to my face (well in the DMs) that a Black character that was completely Europeanized looked like that “because of the [sepia] lighting”. So I'm going to give you all, gracious readers, an example to show that that's not true.

This is Ana Flávia, Afro-Brazilian model! Gaze upon her beauty! Notice how in both of these filters, Ana did not, in fact, turn into a white woman! Because, my friends, that is not how that works! At all!

Here are some other examples of Black people in non-color lighting:

None of these people vanished from the frame just because there was no color. They didn't have to paint on lighter makeup to be captured by the camera. What do they all have in common (in this example)?

Lighting!

Now let’s discuss different ways to think about and potentially try instead!

What I want you all to keep in mind, is that the art you’re painting:

And I know that's silly right, like yeah no shit Ice, we knew that. BUT my point here is don’t be afraid to study photography, theatre, and staging for ideas. They actively work with light! It’s why I share so many images of models; it’s purposeful, focused staging of light with many of these compositions!

Brown-skinned Black people- brown-skinned people in general- GLOW in the light! Our skin reflects environmental light! There’s so much opportunity to play with that, and you can see different examples in those mediums.

Here are a couple articles of lighting in film focused on Black actors.

When lighting a person with dark complexion, the answer is not LIGHTENING THE SKIN, it’s understanding how light reflects off of dark skin.” -Nilah Magruder

Nilah Magruder (Black creator!) has an ENTIRE, thorough and wonderful essay on the topic, far better than I could give! She incorporates the use of cameras, lighting, painting, and more- so rather than be redundant here, I'm going to spotlight (ha see what I did there. It's okay, I know I'm funny) her and her explanation.

Incorporating Blackness in Color/Colorful Lighting

@dsm7 has an excellent and short visual explanation of how picking certain colors will lead to washing out or whitewashing Black characters, and how certain lighting and backgrounds (think the black and white photos on brighter backgrounds) will change the way their skin tone looks.

@nicosbighead has one of my favorite images on here, that shows how many different colors can still be used to convey the image of Blackness. Notice how all those pinks still worked?

@gaksdesigns has a beautiful picture here that I feel utilizes the light in a very minimal yet effective way to show highlights even on a palette that's fully brown.

This article approaches from a lighting perspective via filmmaking, but essentially Sade Ndya suggests instead of increasing the amount of light, change the color/lens of the light based on your character’s skin, as well as for the circumstances of the scene. They'll remain vibrant that way, and you’ll still capture what you need.

I know one way I do this on CSP (I think I’ve mentioned this but I can’t remember) is to use the Add Glow tool with the same or a similar shade of the character’s brown skin tone as a highlight under natural light, or maybe use different colors or filters depending on the sort of light on their skin at the time.

Here’s a reddit about it too, just because I know y’all value Reddit on here, and someone else discussed the topic that both Nilah and Sade discussed.

Is It Intentional?

There are going to be times where you intend for the light to be minimal. Maybe it’s a style choice. That should still show purposeful composition. Here’s an interview with famed Black director Ava Duvernay discussing the intentional darkness on Black actors in the prison scene in the movie Selma. To show that they're both trapped in prison AND that Martin is temporarily low on resolve- it's a part of the story that's being told.

I'm always talking about this: there is a difference between intention (and following through), and neglecting to think about it at all. And neglect isn't what we want, because often we can tell visually when it is- when an artist simply did not think to do it for one versus the rest.

Sidenote, on Youtube in the suggestions after Ava's interview, are also plenty of videos discussing lighting for dark-skin as well- why not take the chance to look?

Conclusion

We do not lack for light! We aren’t flat and lightless when you see us in life. It's actually a pretty awesome part of being brown-skinned. If you’re giving proper, flattering lighting to everyone else, give it to us as well. Study and experiment with ways to highlight brown skin.

It’s AI Generated, he’s not wearing tartan, more of a lumberjack check and his thumbs are pieces of fried chicken.

This was under a spiel of “Proud of my Scottish heritage.”

THE MICROBRACHIUS DICKI

And can I just say, as someone who also had black mold in the walls of my house that was making me deathly ill and affecting my mental health, I'm really not enjoying the connotations that breathing in black mold spores make you a racist transphobe.

Like I'm just saying. There's off your rocker because you're becoming Patient Zero and then there are the life choices and decisions she has chosen to make because she's a bigot.

The two are not the same.

Did black mold make her name a character "Cho Chang" without research 20 years ago?

Did black mold force her to invent a race of creatures who loved and begged to be slaves?

Did black mold make her use antisemitic stereotypes in her worldbuilding of goblins?

Did black mold help her make lycanthropy into an allegory that seems suspiciously similar to the AIDs epidemic?

Did black mold give her a pen name to publish propaganda novels about trans women who are serial killers, also years and years ago?

Except some people do.

Some people are so desperate to have a reason for her behavior that they are saying her bigotry is being caused by a health crisis.

I had to have a heart-to-heart with a mutual about this yesterday --someone who I generally consider to have good sense -- because they'd read something on Twitter cobbled together from various articles about how mold exposure affects the brain, because the person was so desperate to believe their beloved childhood author couldn't possibly be a terrible person, it must have been this secret mold the whole time.

And then, when I fell down the rabbit hole, I also saw more people saying it. Some of them here on Tunglr dot hell. And like yeah, most people are joking in that serious way, but there are some people taking it as an excuse and running with it to justify their continued enjoyment of her work.

To prove something to a friend, please

REBLOG IF YOU THINK ASEXUALS BELONG IN LGBTQ+ SPACES

Me:

i love this post so much

makes me happy every time i see it :3