Sketches And Things I’m Kind Of Proud Of

PPG Reboot: NO! no boobs allowed!

Bubbles: “That’s not a unicorn, that’s a plain old pony”

Buttercup: *knocks his horn off*

“It’s not a unicorn it’s just… Sad"

It’s a colt.”

“What’s a colt?”

“A baby horse.”

“Then what’s a filly?”

“Uh a horse with attitude?”

they fucking just brought up gender

blatantly 

and tried to cleverly cover it up

So this is basically the same thing as ripping off a transperson’s pants and telling them they aren’t that gender

how do they show the reaction

okay not bad, I mean it’s still awful that they’re showing something like this when being outed is a triggering traumatic experience-

aaaaand they made him get over the top angry and ridiculous over this

“WELL EXCUSE ME, I MAY NOT HAVE A HORN

BUT I DO HAVE A HEART

AND IN THAT HEART I KNOW I’M A BEAUTIFUL UNICORN”

“Woah, drama bomb.”

HOLY

FUCKING SHIT

DID SHE REALLY JUST SAY THAT?!?!

By the way did I forget to mention they’re basically saying being trans is like claiming you’re a mythological creature? 

“WE’ll get the professor to turn you in to a unicorn, and then I can be friends with a REAL LIVE UNICORN!”

okay so

she’s only supportive of his identity because it’d be cool to be besties with a unicorn

imagine if I had a friend who was like “OH it’d be cool if I had a guy friend, get an operation so I can have a guy friend!”

y’know

basically denying I’m a guy unless I have a penis

ew she’s even fantasizing about it and imposing her ideal of what a unicorn should be on him

so now we need a scene transfer

let’s see, what’s a perfectly appropriate scene to cut away to in an episode that was specified as a trans issues metaphor?

a pickle museum

that’s right folks

we’re talking about a transunicorn getting a horn transplant, and the best way to do a scene transfer is a joke about a museum containing pickles

y’know

cuz phallic jokes 

“Professor! He needs this!”

“I NEED THIS”

…… so yeah his feelings on this matter don’t actually matter to bubbles apparently, she just wants him to be a unicorn for her sake.

Because that’s how being trans works

right?

people are actually imposing what THEY want you to be, you’re not actually trans, you’re just trying to be something someone else wants you to be C:

“Well it’s up to you Donny, is this something you want to try?”

“As long as my BFF Bubbles says it’s a good idea, I am DOWN!”

Oh

so

now he’s only doing this because Bubbles wants him to

not because he actually really badly/passionately wants to be a unicorn???

Also, trans operations are risky and still under research, so this is actually a super serious decision. 

Professor: This is your body and it’s a serious choice!

Thoroughly weigh your options as you read through this document in all its entirety.”

Okay there is no excuse now. This is 100% a trans issue episode, when they use terminology like “it’s your body and it’s a serious choice”

And this is how they treat it.

“EH, I SKIMMED IT!”

Note how it says “FOREVER” in big red letters?

Indicating to our lovely children that this is a permanent change, and such a serious, risky procedure :C 

So now we see what direction this episode is really going

They’re basically giving the moral that “changing your body is risky and bad and comes with lots of bad side effects”

Don’t believe me?

So yeah guess what

it didn’t work

this is how they’re depicting transitioning by the way

by making it look FUCKING HORRIFYING

So now that he’s gotten his operation with bad side effects, he’s reduced to being a freakshow

and his conditions get worse

he’s fucking crying, he’s horrified

they cut back to the pickle museum

and shatter a pickle statue

okay let me explain why this is so fucked up

The mayor is explaining if this pickle statue breaks, bad luck will occur. And it gets shattered.

Now in context of this episode, why this was either on purpose or just a really shitty choice: we once again have someone saying ‘if you break thing (that happens to be a phallic object joke btw) then bad stuff will happen’

it’s the same thing they’re saying this episode

if you try to change your body

bad things will happen

“LOOK AT ME, I’M A FREAK, WE ARE NO LONGER BFFS!”

Buttercup: Woah, he’s a freak.

Bubbles: He is not a freak, he is my friend!

REALLY?! THAT’S WHY HE’S NOT A FREAK?! BECAUSE HE’S YOUR FRIEND? WHO BY THE WAY YOU ONLY WANTED TO BE FRIENDS WITH IF HE WAS A UNICORN?!?!!

“Donny this is all my fault, I put you in danger just because I wanted to be friends with a unicorn”

oh good at least she admits it but that doesn’t exactly fix the problem now does it? Nor does it remotely tackle transissues, 

what the hell is it trying to say here

 “friends of transpeople shouldn’t pressure them to change themselves”??????

i’m pretty sure that’s not the major issue transpeople are dealing with

“DEEP DOWN IN YOUR HEART OF HEARTS, YOU ARE A REAL LIVE UNICORN!”

“NO, IN MY HEART I KNOW I’M A MONSTER!”

Uh, guys

I know you’re trying to make this a good message and all

but you’re really REALLY not

“i just wanted to be friends with a unicorn”

so what does she do

continue to insist he’s a unicorn

and this upsets him

yeah you had that coming, Bubbles

SO IN AN AMAZING TWIST, UNICORNS APPEAR!

“Wait which ones are stallions?”

… WOW.

just

wow

throw in a joke about gender binaries in a trans issues episode

s’great

that’s just

real great

“I blamed you but I didn’t think of the consequences either. I sooo wanted to be a unicorn too…”

“But you ARE a unicorn!”

so being trans is just ‘wanting it’ I guess, and wanting to change comes with HORRIBLE consequences.

Oh by the way

turns out

he actually IS a unicorn

“I had to wait until you went on an intense journey of adolescent discovery.”

so there’s no trans issues here at all I guess

because he was a unicorn the whoooole time

no really

he was actually a unicorn the whole time, no magical transformation in to a unicorn or anything

he just had a horn under his hair and he never looked

I’m not making that up, that’s what happens.

Look they even fix the pickle museum

And then they have a happy ending and fly away AND GOD WHAT TRASH

Where the fuck do I even begin?

So the overall lesson in this episode really didn’t come off as accepting or tolerant of trans issues in the slightest.

They outed their ‘trans’ character at the start, didn’t address how wrong that was

the overall lesson here is not to change your body because bad things will happen and you’ll be a monster

I want to say this right now:

I am trans. And it’s people telling me that I’m NOT a boy, that I SHOULDN’T want t change that makes me feel like a monster.

It makes me feel like a freak.

CN decided to make a trans character a villain for trying to change ‘who they are’.

I’m going to keep this short and simple because the fix to this abomination IS simple:

This episode would have been PERFECT if he became a monster because everyone kept insisting he was a pony over and over and over and over

his anger could grow from no one letting him be what he feels

and in the end, bubbles insisting to him that he IS a unicorn, and that she was wrong for not treating him like one from the start

and everyone accepting him as a unicorn

Imagine this ending:

Everyone believing in him and accepting him as a unicorn is what turns him in to a unicorn

But most of all, the most important thing, is that he has to believe in himself. 

He might not have been a unicorn in body but he was a unicorn at heart and that’s what mattered most, and as long as he was true to his heart and everyone else could accept him for what he feels on the inside.

Bam, unicorn. The problem is solved, he no longer feels like he has to be a monster or a freak, he doesn’t feel trapped in his own body and misunderstood and mislabelled. 

You see.

How fucking HARD was that to fix?!

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-powerpuff-girls-20160401-story.html

“In addition to shattering old tropes and kick-punching dated ideas, the new “Powerpuff Girls” will also address issues of gender and identity. One upcoming episode in particular touches on ideas of gender identity – a topic open to conversation even in animated shows, thanks to programs such as “Steven Universe,” which explores gender fluidity and rejects established gender norms.

I realize now that it was a book about me dealing with depression before I even knew it. Looking back at how blatant the projecting was, it’s obvious now. It wasn’t then.

In the story, the middle-generation people are lost. They’re apathetic. They’re just a placeholder. The only job they have is to keep the ship running, have kids, and die. As the middle generation of people began becoming adults, suicide rates were skyrocketing. Crime and drug rates were jumping. This generation was completely apathetic because they felt that they had no use.

In the story, a small group of people in the middle-generation create the Weather Project. They turn the ship into a terrarium. They make magnificent gardens and take the DNA of animals they took with them and recreate them and they make this cold, metal spaceship that they have to live their entire lives on into a home. They take what little they have and they break it and rearrange it into something beautiful. They take this radical idea and turn the ship into a wonderful jungle of trees and birds and sunshine.

And I realize now how much it reflects my state of mind as I transitioned from a child into an adult while dealing with depression. You always hear “it gets better” and “when you’re older things will be easier” and I was so sick of waiting for it to get better. I was in the middle-generation stage. And I was sick of it. I was so sick of waiting.

When I was in highschool I didn’t know how to end the story. I didn’t know how to have a happy ending. I didn’t have the life experience then to finish the story in a meaningful way. I didn’t know how to make it better for these middle-generation characters.

But now that I’m older, I’m learning. That if you sit and wait for things to get better, it never will. You have to take your life and break it apart and rearrange it into something beautiful. You have to make the cold metal ship into the garden that you deserve. You have to make your own meaning. You have to plant your own garden.

>Hear people constantly complaining that the current union leadership is super corrupt, it's all just the same ten guys making all the decisions in secret and nobody else in the union ever gets to know what's going on

>Go to the monthly union meetings that are completely open to all 1200 union members

The comics:

Hypnotic suggestions from being mind controlled persist after the controller’s death, causing the victim to occasionally take actions to support the cause of a mind flayer cult that no longer exists.

Repeated demonic possession has left the patient with permanent gaps in their soul’s defenses, causing them to immediately get re-possessed if they go outside a consecrated area.

Post-resurrection trauma as the revived soul remembers an unpleasant afterlife.

Curse of bad luck - makes any small illness or injury potentially fatal if not treated with anti-curse in addition to anti-infection procedures

Magical reliance on a magical or nonmagical substance - can have any number of side effects

Repeatedly being drunk by vampires can cause an increase in blood production and therefore high blood pressure and related ailments. Can be treated by blood letting.

There’s a lot of hybridization happening in a lot of fantasy settings, and that’s just asking for a lot of people with weird half-dragon genetic disorders. Works out fine for some people, not so much for others.

Parasitized by (insert creature here). If you don’t take the correct precautions to keep it dormant it will continue to spread and eventually hatch out/transform you.

Repeated contact with the undead has left you open to their influence - leading to hearing or seeing things that other mortals can’t, which can distort or distract from more mundane concerns.

Alternately to being more vulnerable to intrusion, one’s soul can form a scar that makes helpful magic more difficult to take in.

Sleep disorders that make one fall into an impenetrable sleep at a specific trigger, or to do so for years at a time.

Out of phase with 4D space, one’s body not connected to itself or anchored in place/time in the usual way. There could be a consistent two hour gap between the things you hear and what has happened, you might clip into the floor as if it was in a different place for you, or you might slide through the material plane in cross section.

Intermittent intangibility.

Split into two people, each with only half your traits.

the forgotten dread: memory modification magic has caused the subject’s conscious mind to forget some past trauma, but their subconscious still remembers, causing them emotions that they cannot explain or justify ranging from mild discomfort to blind panic when presented with triggers related to the aforementioned trauma. often encountered in cases where the subject has paid an unscrupulous mage to make them forget their past as an ill-advised alternative to therapy.

Psychically Transmitted Memories: the subject’s mind has been linked to another person’s and, although the bond has since been severed, they have retained memories or thought patterns from the other person that are difficult to distinguish from their own.

Negative Life Syndrome (previously “False Life Syndrome”): seen most often in cases when the subject is exposed to dark magic while in the womb, Negative Life Syndrome leaves the subject’s life energies tainted by undeath without making them truly undead. common symptoms include intolerance of radiant magic, aversion to sunlight, and the inability to set foot on hallowed ground; rare symptoms include healing from negative energies, sudden necrosis, and the desire to eat flesh or drink blood of living beings.

lycanthropy

Awareness of too many dimensions makes it difficult to interact with just this one - either to keep track of conversations, or walk to specific locations without ending up on another planet instead

Telekinetic psychosis - delusions tend to physically affect those around you (but HIGH chance for ableism in this one!)

you have flare-ups where your skin tends to slough off and be replaced by some other substance

After sharing life energy with a dying loved one, you’re now both trying to survive off one person’s supply. Like chronic fatigue, but if your loved one gets too big of a bruise you won’t have the energy to get up until it heals

living in reverse

stuck at a certain age

supersenses lead to constant overstimulation

wahoo new drawfee event means new riso time!!! behold the print included with admission to the monday/tuesday LA live shows!!

also we'll have an exclusive tote bag on sale, as well as a few sticker-y offerings. excited to see folks there!! 🥳